C.S.Lewis, in an introduction to The Screwtape Letters, said much the same thing- the real evil, or at least the genesis of real evil in its human form, was often begotten not in rage, sadism and fury, but in bland meeting rooms and documented via mind numbingly boring memos. there was a TV movie ‘Conspiracy’ about the Wannasee conference that was quite interesting,too.
Both Lewis and Tolkien deal with evil in a studied way. I always thought that Tolkien had not just the war but his colleagues in mind in writing his LOR trilogy.