By far one of the most dominant themes throughout all of Tolkien's works is war. Throughout all of the ages of Middle Earth, there have been many great battles and terrible fights for power. Tolkien himself was a British Officer in the First World War, and spent time in the trenches before he was removed from his battalion due to a deadly sickness known as ‘Trench Fever.’ But despite the awful experiences he must’ve suffered during his own life, his works portray a very two-sided view of armed conflict.