Another "Children of Hurin" Review

I've heard The Lord of the Rings described as a defense of Western Civilisation before... and explained as a justification for all kinds of things, including Western shows of military force. But this review of The Children of Hurin takes a different perspective.

Tolkien's popular Ring trilogy ... sought to undermine and supplant Richard Wagner's operatic Ring cycle, which had offered so much inspiration for Nazism. [1] With the reconstruction of the young Tolkien's prehistory of Middle-earth, we discern a far broader purpose: to recast as tragedy the heroic myths of pre-Christian peoples, in which the tragic flaw is the pagan's tribal identity. Tolkien saw his generation decimated, and his circle of friends exterminated, by the nationalist compulsions of World War I; he saw the cult of Siegfried replace the cult of Christ during World War II. His life's work was to attack the pagan flaw at the foundation of the West.

That's just how it starts.