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There is a very famous story about Issac Asimov where Asimov attended a lecture on one of his stories. After listening to the professor for a while, he finally had enough, stood up and said "no that's not what I was trying to say". The professor replied "What do you know? You only wrote it."
The point being that many times, in search of new angles, analyst can see something that may not be there and ignore any words to the contrary. I'm sure that his experiences in WW I left a deep mark on Tolkien. I'm not so sure they inspired his vision of Mordor as said in the newspaper article. I'm pretty sure that he said otherwise.
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