Educated in France, Alantas worked as a journalist of the Lithuanian news agency ELTA and chief editor of the official daily Lietuvos aidas.

[3] During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, he participated in the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and later emigrated to the United States where he dedicated his life to literary work.

Alantas' father briefly worked in the United States and managed to purchase 80 hectares (200 acres) of land from a former manor in Kriaukėnai [lt] near Radviliškis.

[4] From sixth grade onward, Alantas became immersed in literature, writing poetry and participating in the activities of the Ateitis Catholic Youth organization.

[1] In 1923, he enrolled to study literature in the University of Lithuania, but quit a year later due to lack of funds, and worked as a teacher at a gymnasium in Plungė until 1926.

[4] In the late 1930s, Vairininkai took control of the media and the party apparatus in Antanas Smetona's dictatorship – party newspapers such as Vairas, Akademikas and Lietuvos aidas were chaired by the radical youth, while the general secretary of the Nationalist Union Jonas Statkus [lt] and the chairman Domas Cesevičius [lt] supported their ideas.

[7] For example, he published an article in Vairas arguing in favor of an ethnic cleansing in the Vilnius Region after it was returned to Lithuania according to the terms of the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty – he cited Nazi Germany as an example writing that "the Germans turned the city of Gdynia into the most German city in their country through a fully mechanical process – people were moved out and other people were moved in".

Alantas belonged to the radical right wing of the LAF and supported establishment of the Lithuanian National Socialist Party [lt].

In 1949, Alantas moved to Detroit, United States,[11] where he worked as a low-wage labourer in a Ford Motors automobile factory[12] until retirement in 1968.

Searching for a psychological refuge, he began glorifying Baltic paganism and pre-Christian Lithuanian culture and denounced Christianity as a foreign, imposed influence.

[1] Two other collections, Ant siūbuojančios žemės (On the Swaying Earth) and Svetimos pagairės (Foreign Skies), were published in the post-war years (1946 and 1954) and deal with the lives of Lithuanian refugees and emigrants, anti-Soviet resistance in Lithuania, etc.

[14] As a director of the Vilnius Drama Theatre, he staged two comedies Gyvenimas iš naujo (Life Anew) and Buhalterijos klaida (A Bookkeeping Error).

As a displaced person in post-war Germany, Alantas wrote a more serious drama Aukštadvaris which dealt with love and duty and which premiered in Australia in 1955.

It included Aukštadvaris, three dramas about the desperate struggles of the anti-Soviet Lithuanian partisans, and five comedies that dealt with larger moral issues (e.g. choosing money over love or patriotic duty).

[16] Alantas started his first novel Pragaro pošvaistės (In the Glow of Hell) in Lithuania, finished it in Detroit, and published it in West Germany in 1951.

[1] The work sparked lengthy discussions in Lithuanian literary circles – some 80 reviews and commentaries were collected and published in 1971 as a separate book.

[17] His second novel Tarp dviejų gyvenimų (Between Two Lives) was published in 1960 and was the first lengthy work to deal with the anti-Soviet Lithuanian partisans, highlighting their sacrifices and heroism.

[2] Alantas wrote his fifth novel Liepkalnio sodyba (Liepkalnis Homestead) in response to a contest held by the Union of Lithuanian Agronomists.