Yikes.....I did not know this about Tolkien

[haele]

25. When Tolkien was publishing the Lord of the Rings, he was contacted by the Third Reich

As his name was Germanic, the head of the publishing house there asked him if he had any Jewish ancestory. His answer was:

If I am to understand…
…that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people.

While the quote from The Hobbit is certainly damning to an extent, pretty much everything in that article that is outside of his direct quotes to the BBC is a supposition based on the writer's personal view of early 20th century British social prejudices.

As a philologist, Tolkien had a greater respect for languages and the development of languages than he did of the cultures that developed those languages. He actually preferred the Semitic languages to the Romance languages. From most actual accounts and his own writings, he had few opinions of differences the "races of men" other than as a cultural construct, basically because he was raised in South Africa as a child and had issues with the way different races were treated - and then, after his father died, he was brought back to England where his mother promptly converted to Catholicism, which meant the family was basically disinherited form both sides.
Not apologizing, but he was far less anti-Semitic or racist than most of his colleagues.

BTW, when reading both The Hobbit and TLOR, the way he described hobbits, they were a mix of Near-Eastern and North African in appearance.

Haele