Just a quick point picking up on what Elu Ancalime quotes from Tolkien's letter about his German publishers' enquiry:
Quote:
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Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries?
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It was actually most probably the latter. The authorities in Germany at that time sought to excise all non-Aryan Art as much as possible, and would have sought out racial information on writers, artists etc as far as they could obtain it, in order to 'spare' the German people the risk of reading something 'dangerous'. Tolkien's indignance about this speaks volumes as Britain was by no means free of its own fascists and racial supremacists.