The late writer, Charles Bukowski, was pro-Nazi back in the 1930s & 1940s, and even frequented the German-American Bund, as revealed in a new Hollywood Investigator article. The article's writer, Ben Pleasants, interviewed Bukowski in 1975, and conducted some additional research on Bukowski's early life. Pleasants discovered that Bukowski might have been a quarter Jewish, yet Bukowski was still sentimental over Nazis in 1975.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments
1 - Michelle
Yeah well, and as I learned just yesterday, Henry Ford (yes, THE Henry Ford) wrote a book on Jews that influenced Hitler.
I'm shocked by nothing anymore...
2 - Jim Carruthers
The article is hardly convincing, and of course, the dead can't sue for libel. You might as well claim Lenny Bruce was the Pope (how else would he know so much about the Roman Catholic Church, huh? Answer me that!)
3 - Brian Flemming
Anyone have any confirmation/repudiation of this?
On the one hand, stories like this are easy to make up...
We showed up at noon a few days later, both ordering pastrami on rye with whipped potatoes and beer. One of the hefty waitresses took our order. It was a hot L.A. day and she was sweating in the heat.
While we were waiting for our food to arrive, Bukowski gawked at the predominantly Jewish diners, and swigging down a brew, yelled loud enough so all could hear: "TURN ON THE GAS."
No one looked up. I shook my head and refused to laugh.
And this seems rather convenient...
Henry, Jr. moved downtown and took handouts from his mother. He spent all his time reading in the library, walking through Pershing Square at night where he hoped he would find John Fante, or lying in his flop room drinking. By early 1941 he was a full-fledged Nazi and the stories he wrote reflected that point of view. None survive!
And this reading list does not a Nazi make...
Along with Mein Kampf, he was reading Knut Hamsun's Hunger, just the right fix on work and starvation. He also read John Fante's Ask the Dust, the book that changed his life, and Hemingway's Men Without Women, a little Nietzsche, some Schopenhauer, D.H. Lawrence, and a hell of a lot of Robinson Jeffers, especially the long poems.
But Bukowski's membership in the German-American Bund seems to be a fact that can be checked:
The only place he could express himself comfortably about his love of Hitler and his growing distaste for the U.S. was at the Deutsches Haus, which was just a walk from his home. Now it was no longer a boring place. The D.H., as it was called, had become a front for Hitler. Here he could find books, magazines, and pamphlets in German and English praising Nazism. They were available cheap at the Aryan Bookstore, which was located on the first floor of the D.H.
It was at the D.H. that Bukowski viewed the German war film, "Blitzkrieg in the West," a Nazi propaganda feature that depicted the crushing defeat of Holland, France, Belgium and Denmark before the advancing German army. It played to packed houses of enthusiastic German sympathizers who roared with delight at the triumph of the Fatherland, Bukowski among them.
His parents by that time were not enthusiastic and did not attend. His father openly opposed Hitler and when Bukowski defended him his father would say, "Why don't you find a job? You live in this house and do nothing but read." It was a sore point.
The D.H. gave Bukowski his introduction to the German-American Bund, Hitler's front organization for American youth over eighteen years of age. While fellow students at LACC tried to forget the war, drowning their fears in the Swing Music of the era, petting in the parking lot, or dancing at the Howdy Hop, Henry Bukowski showed up with pamphlets from the Aryan Bookstore and defended the Nazis in class. It made him feel unique!
And if Bukowski marched in the streets of L.A. wearing a Bund military uniform, perhaps there is a picture (or a credible witness)...
On June 18, 1941, Germany attacked the USSR and the fragile peace between the world's two most powerful dictatorships collapsed. Overnight, Marxists like Dalton Trumbo went from peace doves to war hawks, and Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. found a new hero in Charles Lindbergh and his America First Committee.
Lindbergh complained that American Jews, especially in Hollywood, were egging America into a war with Germany. When Lindbergh, the famous aviator, came to Los Angeles and spoke to an overflowing crowd at the Hollywood Bowl, Bukowski and some of his Bund companions led a torchlight parade up into the Hollywood Hills, where they could watch their new hero from the heights as he moved the enormous crowd to their feet over and over again. That was a memory he could recall vividly, from beginning to end.
The crowd was estimated at 20,000 plus and the FBI were on hand to keep tabs on the audience.
And it seems that there may be a collection of documents that would answer a lot of questions. This excerpt is about Bukowski's arrest and questioning by the FBI, following a search of his apartment and seizure of his writings...
The fact that Bukowski remembers specifically it was NOT 1944, but much earlier, he says 1942, is important. It means from that time on he could travel where he wanted with an UNFIT FOR SERVICE draft rating and not worry about the FBI any more. The writings they took from him they kept; they were his Nazi ravings coming off his reading of Mein Kampf, his experiences in the German-American Bund, his participation in the America First Movement and his hatred of Hollywood. All three, much to my amazement, would appear in his work later in life.
The writer, Ben Pleasants, doesn't even say if he tried to get these documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.
He makes some pretty shocking allegations without showing evidence or even showing an effort to have located evidence. He presents his memory as evidence.
It would be pretty easy to spin a bio of an iconoclastic German-American writer who was conflicted about WWII and avoided the draft into this story.
4 - Thomas M. Sipos
The above url offers additional evidence of Bukowski's Nazi sympathies.
5 - Thomas M. Sipos
Oops. The url is not "above" -- apparently, you must click my name.
It's also here: http://www.poetrypreviews.com/poets/poet-bukowski.html
6 - Nathaniel
i think that anyone who reads bukowkis work will realize that he held no more sympathy for the nazi party than he did for you and me. the man was too much of an individual, his work was powerfully anti-establishment and anti "idea." Idea here is meant in the sense of a powerful ideal that moves a soiety. in short i feel his philosophical ideals and poetic aspirations fully repudiate any charges of naziism. in fact i think the whole concept is ridiculous and ill founded. i wonder if maybe it was dreamed up to perhaps make a name for the author or to perhaps juxtapose images ins such a way as to aid in the contradiction of the "mainstream" concepts of the knowing individual who may come to this with a knowlege of both naziiism and bukowski and see the claims made as completely inflamatory and outrageous.
in short i think that the writer has written this story purely for intention. Bukowski's poetry stands outside the boundaries of naziism or antisemitism, bukowski was an equal opportunity world hater but he didnt even hate the world. i would think that the person who wrote that buk was a nazi is more or less an attention whore who feels it neccesary to leach off of the vanity and celebrity of others in order to make a name for his or herself.
i truly doubt if this person gives a good honest fuck for either Bukowski or nazis.
7 - Nathaniel
This is actually one of the biggest fucking slanders i have ever read.
8 - al oof
buk wrote openly and often of his "college years" at lacc in los angeles as part of a group of "nazi sympathizers". (this can be found in any number of his books.) it was more of an effort to antagonize the obvious propaganda of the time and wind people up (ala the later n.y. punks) than any sort of true racist propaganda. bukowski was no more a racist than a misogynist or whatever convenient term the politically correct are apt to pin on him. anybody who's read and understood his work will find a hilarious and hard-won and honest misanthropy that extends to all humanity, bukowski himself included. not for everybody, but a nazi? please....
9 - Bill
Buk's flirtation with nazism is nothing new to anyone who's read any biographical material on the man. As I understand it, Bukowski hung around with this crowd more because of a romantic attatchment he had for Germany, than because he might have been an Anti-semite. He ended up realizing just how pathetic they were, and dropped them like a bad habit.
And as far as the "turn on the gas" comment is concerned - if true, alcoholics often say and do things that they think are funny while under the influence, when nobody else does.
I could care less about Charles Bukowski's political views of whether he was a nazi or not; I like him because his writing smokes!
10 - ccloud
so were a lot of people before the war. kennedy sr. , lindburgh, henry ford, the bush family. if you actually read his poetry and know the works of bukoski. you will understand he is a cynic, not a fascist. he wasn't afraid to mince words.
his number one editor. neeli cherriovski, is of russian jewish heritige. ask him what he thinks about this bullshit.
11 - Brendon K.
Nazi Sympathy is a far cry from Bukowski is a nazi. Im somewhat sentimental about the situation too; I hope we aren't all so jaded. A little more insight and a little less sensationalism please.