PHILIP JOHNSON: NAZI

'Remembering' Philip Johnson By Anne Applebaum
Philip Johnson .... died last week just as the world was marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In its obituary, the New York Times described Johnson as "architecture's restless intellect." The Post proclaimed him a "towering figure." Both articles, like most of the other obituaries, described Johnson as the "elder statesman" of American architecture. Both also mentioned, more or less in passing, Johnson's "early admiration for fascism and anti-Semitism that he soon recanted."

But read a bit more and it turns out that this "early admiration" lasted for the better part of a decade. During that time, Johnson didn't merely sympathize, like Lindbergh, or make a juvenile joke, like Prince Harry. On the contrary, Johnson helped organize a U.S. fascist party. He worked on behalf of the Nazi sympathizer and radio broadcaster, Father Charles E. Coughlin. He attended one of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies in 1938, and in 1939 he followed the German army into Poland. "We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed," he wrote afterward. "It was a stirring spectacle."

In the week since his death, a few articles, including one in the New York Times, have examined Johnson's in fact elaborate and widely known fascist past in more depth. But in his lifetime -- as his obituaries reflect -- nobody was very interested. Johnson won every major architectural award, built dozens of buildings and received commissions from the likes of AT&T and the Lincoln Center. He occasionally apologized for his youthful politics, but with ambivalence. Asked in 1993 whether he would have built buildings for Adolf Hitler in 1936, he answered, "Who's to say? That would have tempted anyone." He frequently described himself as a "whore," a phrase that seems to have amused him -- he liked to shock -- and to have provided another sort of excuse for his past.