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Yet, Tolkien had seen real war, seen real human beings riddled with bullet holes & blown apart (who knows if he himself had taken a life (or many lives)).
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Yet he was disgusted by it. Tolkien hated 'real war'. He hated the slaughter of men; the waste of young life; the indiscriminate killing, the spilling of fresh blood; the mutilated corpses, the rats in the trenches; the madness of the destruction; the lack of reasoning for any of it. Real war is almost by definition a terrible war.
And at the same time, the German soldiers he and his fellow Britons were fighting against were in exactly the same position - real suffering humans, not Orcs cackling at the thought of murder. They were young men just like himself, with their own hopes and fears, their own losses in the trenches; their own desparation. They showed the same qualities and bravery that Tolkien and his own men believed in. They were, essentially, the worthy opponents davem has described.
So when Tolkien was creating his own war, he wanted a 'good' war - a war with clear objectives; fought for the right reasons; clear-cut heroes that knew what they had to do; brave actions everywhere; leaders that struggled alongside their comrades; men fighting and even dying for a better future. But none of this could work if the enemy were equal, 'worthy' opponents - if Aragorn had to kill Orcs weeping for their mothers, whilst archers mowed down desperate, helpless enemies in their thousands, as wounded, moaning half-Orcs were executed out of pity by the Rohirrim, as Legolas found a diary on an Uruk's decapitated body, and Gimli found a wedding ring on a Troll he hacked apart, then the war would lose all sense of 'goodness' - it would just be a fantasized version of the real war Tolkien hated so much.
So Tolkien gave it a more controversial spin - he made the enemies not just opposing forces but actual bad guys, who enjoyed killing and burning and were grotesque parodies of the heroes he idolized. It was acceptable to kill these monsters because it was right to - they were evil, malicious beasts who invaded innocent and normally peaceful people. Tolkien wanted to show that some wars were right - and also that wars should only happen when there is a good reason to - in this case, to bring down the evil, dominating Sauron. Otherwise, Gondorians and Rohirrim and British and Germans should all live happily in peace.
But wait! - there is an anomaly. What of the Southrons, the humans who were forced to march far from their homes and families to fight on a foreign field for a lord they maybe feared or even hated, and yet even then still made an honourable show of themselves, going down fighting? They sound exactly like the Germans of the real world, and Sam's bitter and sad thoughts on the slain Southron are all the more relevant and tragic because of it. To me, they repesent the Germans - the worthy opponents that should not really be suffering; that were going through the same torment as the 'good' soldiers. Tolkien was showing that even his 'idealized' war wasn't perfect - that no matter how right and justifiable any conflict is, it is still a conflict and so people on both sides will suffer, and that is the true tragedy of war.