Philip J. Cohen
[5] In 1998, Franjo Tuđman, the President of Croatia, awarded Cohen the Order of Danica Hrvatska (for culture), the 13th highest award in the Croatian honours system, for his "contribution in spreading the truth about the aggression against Croatia", and "exposing Great Serb and anti-Croat propaganda" through his books, Serbia’s Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History and The World War II and contemporary Chetniks: Their historico-political continuity and implications for stability in the Balkans.
[7] Its front cover included a reproduction of an anti-Semitic postage stamp printed in January 1942 to mark the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition that opened in Belgrade on 22 October 1941.
Ingrao described the book as a "well-written, heavily footnoted narration" which "details the degree to which the Serbs of what is today Rump-Yugoslavia collaborated with the Nazis, both before and immediately after the April 1941 German invasion".
Ingrao observed that while scholars were already familiar with a great deal of the material included in the book, Cohen's exposé on the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society founded by Slobodan Milošević was new evidence about an organisation that was used to convince the international community of the common bond between Serbs and Jews.
[11] In February 2000, Dennis Reinhartz, Professor of History and Russian at the University of Texas at Arlington reviewed Cohen's book in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
[12] The French journal Cahiers de l'URMIS published in its 2000 issue a paper by Marko Živković, an associate professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, which criticised Cohen's book.
Živković stated that this strategy involved presenting anti-Semitism in the NDH as an import from Nazi Germany, and in trying to show that the Serbs were no better, and possibly worse in their treatment of Jews during World War II than the Croats.
Svirčević further pointed that "In fact, the Cohen's book teems with forgeries, half-truths, incompetent use of historical sources, overstrained theses and ill-intended inferences."
[18] In March 2011, Marko Attila Hoare, an associate professor of economics, politics, and history at Kingston University posted a personal blog entry which dealt with a number of issues regarding Cohen's book.
[20][a] In 2013, Raphael Israeli, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published his book The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941-1945.
[23] He also observed that Cohen had "definitively demonstrated" that the head of the German-appointed puppet regime, Milan Nedić, along with other members of the Serbian Orthodox Church, "were aware and supportive of the German extermination plan and execution [of Jews], and were not loath to lend a hand when asked".
[26] Byford emphasizes that Cohen belongs to group of authors whose works support Croatian side in propaganda war with Serbia also by intentionally depicting Serbs as genuine "genocidal nation".
