Who then could have written it? There is only one candidate. She died in 2002. She had lived in Belgrade, Serbia for 30 years before she left in 1992 to go to Zagreb to orchestrate and mastermind the anti-Serbian propaganda war for the Croatian government under Franjo Tudjman. Her name was
Ljubica Stefan.
All the pieces fit. She had the motive, the opportunity, the means, and the background. Although she lived most of her life in Serbia, she was an ethnic Croatian. She lived and worked in Belgrade. She knew the Serbian language. She had access to Serbian documents and archives. Also, as a hack historian, a pseudo-historian, someone below the radar, she did not have to concern herself about academic or scholarly accountability. Moreover, everything that appears in the Cohen text also appears in
propaganda screeds published by or attributed to Stefan when she worked for the
Croatian Government Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Stefan worked closely with Croatian ultra-nationalist Franjo Tudjman in rehabilitating the Ustasha regime and engaged in historical revisionism by attempting to equate Serbia’s role during the Holocaust with that of Croatia’s Ustasha NDH government.
A Croatian Ustasha NDH government pamphlet issued during the Holocaust that listed Jewish-owned businesses in Croatia and Bosnia.
Serbia’s Secret War is essentially an expanded version of Stefan’s 1993 book From Fairy Tale to Holocaust: Serbia: Quisling Collaboration with the Occupier During the Period of the Third Reich with Reference to Genocide against the Jewish People, by Ljubica Stefan, published by the Croatian Government. The full publishing credit is listed as: “Zagreb: Culture and Promotion Dept., Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Croatia, 1993.” The text that Cohen fronted was actually a compendium of Stefan’s earlier publications. Moreover, the covers of both books were almost identical, using images of German-occupation postage stamps. They needed some shocking, anti-Jewish
image. German-occupation “anti-Masonic”
postage stamps were the best they could do.
Serbia’s Secret War was ghostwritten by the Croatian Ljubica Stefan who was funded, recruited, and endorsed by the Croatian government. Justly and deservedly the racist propaganda tract has been thoroughly discredited and debunked. The ghostwritten hoax is largely forgotten today.
A 1942 Croatian government poster for an anti-Jewish exhibition in Zagreb with the Croatian word for Jews, “Zidovi”.
Why did the Croatian government and the Croatian lobby hire Philip J. Cohen as the front? Isn’t this outrageous audacity and contempt? Why hire a dermatologist with no background or training or experience in history to front a propaganda tract? Isn’t this a mindless and inane exercise in propaganda worthy of derision and contempt? It all depends. It depends on what audience you target, the target group. The Croatian government was not targeting scholars and academics. This was not meant for them. The primary appeal was emotional and intended for an uncritical mass audience. It was an exercise in public relations, a PR stunt. Of course, the screed was nonsensical and illogical. The screed was propaganda to justify and rationalize the genocide and ethnic cleansing committed by the Croatian government, supported and assisted by the U.S., committed against the Krajina Serbs. In 1995, with U.S. support and backing, the Croatian government ethnically cleansed over 200,000 Krajina Serbs in the alrgest act of ethnic cleansing since World War II and the Holocaust. It was genocide under the Genocide Convention.
The book had a two-fold purpose. To justify the genocide committed against the Krajina Serbs and to rehabilitate Croatian ultra-nationalism, to
exonerate and to minimize and to trivialize the Ustasha genocide. The ghostwritten book acted as a smokescreen to obfuscate the real genocide committed by the Croatian NDH Ustasha regime against Serbs, Jews, and Roma.
The premise of the book relies on a
Tu quoque argument, from the Latin, meaning “You, too” or “You also”. The argument runs as follows: Serbs have accused Croatia of genocide during the Holocaust against Jews. Serbs have accused Croatia of being an ally of Nazi Germany and of engaging in the systematic murder of Jews during the NDH Ustasha government. But Serbia too “collaborated” with Nazi Germany and played a role in the Holocaust against Jews. You, too. Legally, the tu quoque argument is rejected because it relies on a logical fallacy. It is a variation of the “two wrongs make a right” fallacy. The Croatian propaganda argument runs as follows: Serbs accuse Croatia of genocide against Jews. Serbs committed genocide against Jews. Therefore, Croatia did not commit genocide against Jews. This is an illogical and illegitimate conclusion because whether or not Serbs committed a genocide against Jews is not connected to the issue of Croatian genocide against Jews. The glaring fallacy in this instance is that Serbs are not the only ones who accuse Croatia of genocide. This is a well-documented fact in
the historiography of the Holocaust. The issue is not whether there was a genocide, but only a controversy over the extent or magnitude. The argument seeks to smear and to discredit the accuser by ad hominem attacks or attacks aimed at an entire country, people, nationality, or religion. The use of the tu quoque argument by Stefan, and front man Cohen, is thus illogical, illegitimate, and fallacious. The appeal is not to logic and reason, but to racism and ethnic and religious enmity and raw emotion.
Whom did the Croatian government target? What specific audience was targeted? The target audience consisted largely of Jewish Americans. American Jews and Israeli Jews were the principal targets. If Ljubica Stefan or the Croatian government put their names on the text the book would not be as convincing and persuasive and credible. The illusion had to be manufactured that the book was unbiased, neutral, and written by a non-Croatian. The way the Croatian government and lobby got around this problem was fairly easy. All you had to do was to hire a front. Someone was needed to sell the Croatian propaganda. Cohen, although a dermatologist, a skin doctor, nevertheless, had a Jewish name and was an American citizen. It was the name of an American Jewish author. This lent the book a certain modicum of credibility and legitimacy. Moreover, the preface was written by another prominent American Jewish author, sociologist David Riesman.
The Croatian government and the Croatian lobby reckoned that no one would challenge the book or Cohen’s credentials. Who would even dare? If anyone tried, they would be branded as anti-Semitic. Moreover, the name value of Cohen and Riesman itself would sell the book. This is why the name of the actual author, Ljubica Stefan, did not appear on the book. Instead, the name of Philip J. Cohen was placed on the cover as the author.
The Nazi-allied Croatian Ustasha government stamps commemorating Croatian volunteer troops that fought alongside Axis troops at Stalingrad, the Sea of Azov, Sevastopol, and the Don.
Propaganda is always destroyed and discarded after it has served its purpose. Cohen’s outrageous hoax is not any different. He is back to being a dermatologist. The Cohen hoax does, however, demonstrate how easily people are manipulated and hoodwinked, regarded hardly any better than cattle. This outlandish hoax did not occur in a totalitarian state, but in the U.S.
