19,240 British troops were killed on the first day;
In one of his letters in 1960, Tolkien himself wrote that “The Dead Marshes [just north of Mordor] and the approaches to the Morannon [an entrance to Mordor] owe something to northern France after the Battle of the Somme”.
Britain should have made a deal with the Germans, the world would have been better off. But Britain and France couldn’t deal with a new kid being on the block.
So what if France lost. But consider, no Hitler, no Bolsheviks. And we would have stayed out of it, as well.