He took alot of it from real myths, legends, and cultures. The man did his research...

My Brother in law has written an excellent book on that subject. I suggest you would really enjoy it: http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/mythmoralityreligion.htm

A difficult question to answer. Tolkien often stated that his purpose was to create a mythology for the English people. He remarked that the Celtic, Germanic and Scandanavian peoples all had their own mythology, yet the English did not. Three main things mix to give Tolkien's stories direction and morality - 1/. Tolkien had a happy, rural early childhood, and many of the landscapes and descriptions of the Shire and it's surrounding areas (the Old Forest, Bree, The Mill - and indeed the miller's son) are taken from his childhood memories. 2/. Tolkien had a profoundly deep Catholic faith, and his world is mostly black and white, with an inflexible morality, tempered by compassion, adhered to by the story's heroes. 3/. Tolkien's experiences during World War One affected him deeply. All but one (I think) of the friends he went to college with died or were severely injured. The mechanisation and industrialisation of killing turned Tolkien against technology generally. Thus, in LOTR, all evil has as it's by-product smokes, stench, noise, and (at best) a senseless apathy toward living things. So LOTR is meant to be a fictionalised mythology, and in common with most writing it has elements drawn from the author's own experiences.

I know that Tolkien was in WW1, and I always felt he was speaking about his experience and how he felt about the war. If you look at it, each "race" in his book represents a different part of those that took part in that war. I also got a feeling that his distrusted industry, and was ecologically minded. Come to turn out, in a sort of weird irony, volumes of Canadian forests have been slaughtered to reproduce his books - and for generations even after his death.

Tolkien officially said that LOTR is not a referance to anything in the real world

Tolkien said,"I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that may confuse "applicability" with "allegory"; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader and the other in the purposed domination of the author." and "…any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language." (And, of course, the more "life" a story has the more readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable just as a story.)." He also said that he despised allegory in all of its manifestations. So I don't think it was his intent.

Yes, but not to anything specifically. Nothing in it is meant to be an allegory for specific persons or events; rather it is a story of universal "applicability" by all readers in all times. The reader - ANY reader - could read it and feel it in some way applied to him, his situation, and his worldview, finding insights and resonance with his own experiences. For example, The Ring is not an allegory for the Bomb, or for technology, or for the vain hope of complete freedom, invulnerability and autonomy, but rather can represent/resonate with any and all Faustian bargains and addictions, any trap by which man might loose his humanity and his soul in the pursuit of something he thinks he wants most of all. "Golem both loves and hates the ring ... as he both loves and hates himself."

First: the lord of the ring was written in World War 2, the book in a fictional structure was written depicting each of the forces in the second world war, depicting each band, the strugles of the good ones, and the hungry of power of those who want it, evil versus good. the ring is just the medium as a object of power of those who fights for it, i mean the ring is what those evil forces want, power.