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"......If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but occupied......"

This is very interesting commentary, and it does not cast the good guys from WWII -- and, by extension, us, fifty years later -- in a good light.

So in order for us to be "good" in Tolkein's eyes we would have had to destroy the ring (nukes) and never use them to shorten the war and save lives. We would also had to have commited genocide on the Japanese and Germans instead of occupying their country? I think your misreading Tolkein in this case. He was just trying to say that Lord of the Rings was not based on World War 2. I don't think he's saying that the heros in his books took an appropriate action and that the victors of World War 2 were wrong in what they did.

So in order for us to be "good" in Tolkein's eyes we would have had to destroy the ring (nukes)

No, no, no. Tolkien specifically rejected allegory. He was writing myth about the prehistory of the world. There is not a modern day comparison to the one ring -- save Power (of goverments).

"Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for domination)"
--J. R. R. Tolkien
_The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien_ p. 246 (1995)
"I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery"
--ibid.

Click here for more on Tolkien's political opinions.

Right. The allegory between the Ring and Atomic power doesn't even work at the story level. The evil in the Ring is the lust it creates for power over other people. The Ring brings domination and slavery of people, not the ability to kill people.