in other words, the difference is merely one of semantics. I will confess that LOTR has little allegory to it, but it certainly symbolically represents a lot, intentional or no. However, a black and white assignment of any group to anything else is a foolish mistake, and will get shot down as soon as you look at details.
for example, Linguistically, one of the two elf groups most represents Finnish. The Fins were not on the side of the Allies in WWII (the good guys). The had an agreement with Germany, not because they liked Facism, but because historically they had much more to fear from the Soviet Union on their back door. So Finland, in the WWII/European culture comparison was at best a non-passionate enemy of our English/American good guys.
However, the Elves didn't fight against Mordor's enemies for any reason. In fact, the worked against Mordor.
Just an example. Tolkien was a great writer. He was able to avoid such stark analagous relationships. Nothing is so easy in LOTR, as much as we like to see it on the surface.
