No Sense in Dwelling on the Past?

This book examines the German air force monograph project known as the Karlsruhe project where the US Air Force employed former Luftwaffe generals to record the history of World War II from the German perspective. The Air Force monographs have proven useful to historians because of their high quality. The Karlsruhe monographs writers were insulated from outside pressure, and produced studies immediately useful to the military. The Air Force ignored the monographs and failed to benefit from the experience of the Luftwaffe. The author illustrates the inherent tensions in writing official military history and uses the Karlsruhe project as a lens to examine problems plaguing the Air Force during the early Cold War. Still, cooperative historical work proved to be an inexpensive and unexpected way of cementing the critical West German–American military alliance, and both air forces came to value this aspect of the project more than the historical studies it produced.