Serbia’s Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History

266 Pages·1996·16.459 MB·English

by  Philip J. Cohen, David Riesman

1/ J r J
foreword by David Riesman
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NUMBER TWO
Eastern European
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..
An entire piece of Serbian history is mis¬
sing. And in the middle of the latest Yugo¬
slav war—Europe’s worst blood bath since
World War II—Serbian politicians, propa¬
gandists, and revisionist historians have
made a cynical attempt at replacing the miss¬
ing piece by rewriting the Holocaust record.
They claim that Serbs were not Nazi collabo¬
rators in genocide, but purely victims of the
same atrocities that befell the Jews; and that
Serbian aspirations for a Greater Serbia are
not driven by a murderous, nationalistic ha¬
tred, but rather are propelled by a victim’s
desire to lay claim to a safe homeland, a
Serbian Promised Land. Thus has the cur¬
rent spilling of blood been justified.
Philip J. Cohen argues that the existence
of such a propaganda campaign, emanating
from Belgrade, began in the earliest days of
the post-World War II era and, since then,
has been reflected in the world media, as
well as in popular commentary and schol¬
arly analysis. More astonishing is that this
campaign has been widely successful, par¬
ticularly in Israel.
In attempting to not only establish but
also explain the Serbian record during the
Nazi occupation, Cohen takes his reader
back into nineteenth-century Serbia to un¬
cover the foundation of a political and so¬
cial system that was partly built on ethnic
prejudices and the glorification of violence.
The rise of Serbian fascism m the 1930s was
therefore inevitable—predetermined by the
politics of power- and land-grabbing.
(Continued on back flap)
NUMBER TWO
Eastern European Studies
Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Series Editor
SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD
Norman Cigar
Thomas Cushman
Bronislaw Misztal
James Sadkovich
Keith Tester
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■
Serbia's
Secret war
Serbian president Milan Nedic on a state visit to Adolf Hitler,
September 18, 1943. This photo first appeared in the November, 1943,
Spanish edition of Signal.
Propaganda and the Deceit ofHistorj
by Philip J. Cohen
foreword by David Riesman
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS
College Station
A
I
Copyright © 1996 by Philip J. Cohen
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cohen, Philip J., 1953-
Serbia’s secret war : propaganda and the deceit of history / by
Philip J. Cohen ; foreword by David Riesman.
p. cm.—(Eastern European studies ; no. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-89096-688-5 (alk. paper)
1. World War, 1939-1945—Yugoslavia—Serbia. 2. World War,
19 3 9-194 5 —Yugoslavia—Serbia—Historiography. 3. World War,
1939-1945—Collaborationists—Yugoslavia—Serbia. 4. National¬
ism—Yugoslavia—Serbia. 5. Serbia—History—1918-1945.
I. Riesman, David. II. Title. III. Series: Eastern European studies
(College Station, Tex.) ; no. 2.
D802.Y82S434593 1996
940.54^64971—dc2o 95-46662
CIP
To
ROCHELLE, CHARLES,
and DOROTHEA CAMILLA
for their unfailing support