The complicated five-way battle at the end of The Hobbit, which leads to a series of hastily-established alliances and treaties, might be Tolkien’s version of World War One. When considering The Hobbit's connections to World War One, you must remember that in every war there is an enemy. In the Great War the enemy was the Germans and the Austrians, where in The Hobbit the enemy came in the form of the dragon Smaug. Smaug, like any other dragon of Tolkien's world, is very greedy and is obsessed with taking and hoarding treasure.