There is a huge difference between Germany's armed forces under the King, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and those under Hitler's Nazi regime. Putting a proud military tradition underneath such an odious symbol sullied its reputation and condemned it to being seen as one of history's most murderous of tools. German aircraft in the First World War were very good. The Albatross D.III and the Fokker DR.I, both flown by Germany's top ace Manfred von Richthofen, to the Fokker D.III and D.VII which appeared late in the war, but were taken by many of the victorious nations, the designs and the aircraft themselves incorporated into their own post-war air services.
Germany's defeat in 1918, and the Versailles Treaty officially ending the conflict, ensured that all of the Kaiser's warplanes ended up on the scrap heap...taken or purposely destroyed to prevent Germany from ever becoming a military threat again...so much for good intentions...
Some of these WWI aircraft survived into the Nazi era, with at least one going into a Berlin museum...
First, there was Hermann Göring's personal collection of over 70 WWI aircraft...
He was a veritable war hero. He flew for and with Richthofen, and when he was killed, Göring took over fighter squadron 11, or Jasta 11 (short for Jagdstaffel in German). He was also an odious excuse for a human being, devoid of honor. This is the man who ran the Gestapo, this is the man who oversaw the establishment of the Concentration Camp system, and this is the man who liked to collect all sorts of things (mostly stolen works of art), including the largest collection of WWI aircraft seen since the end of the First War. They were on display in Berlin, close to the railway station, until 1943, when Allied bombing damaged and destroyed part of the collection. The remining aircraft were hacked up and cut apart, in a most rudimentary way, and placed in railway boxcars for transport east, into northeaster Poland. Known as Pomerania, this area was Eastern Prussia under German rule, and the most valuable aircraft collection in the World never made it. A few of the boxcars were found in the closing days of WWII, sitting idle on the tracks beneath a forest near Poznan, a couple of hundred miles due east of Berlin. What was left consisted of broken up fuselages of some of the most iconic WWI aircraft...including a British Sopwith Camel F.1 and a Halberstadt CL.II.
Unfortunately, this was all the Poles found, the aircraft's wings were never being located and presumably destroyed. Held by the Polish government for decades, these remaining WWI aircraft have gone through various stages of restoration, and exist today on display in Kraków, making Poland the nation with the rarest, and largest collection of mostly one-of-a-kind WWI aircraft in the World, albeit some being wingless to this day.
And then there is that one Fokker D.VII...
Perhaps the best and most forgiving German fighter aircraft of World War I. It's not the most well known, that title is held by the DR.I, or tri-plane, made famous by Richthofen as the "Red Baron", but known to Germany's enemies, and highly coveted. Göring flew one of these too...along with many of the Kaiser's aces.
After the end of the war, Germany was required to relinquish all of its aircraft with the D.VII being the only aircraft specifically mentioned by name in the Armistice agreement. Fokker D.VII's were taken by the Allied powers as war booty, but some found their way into the air forces of neutral countries like Switzerland. One particular plane was purchased and served in the Swiss Air Force. In 1920 it was privately purchased in Germany and flown out under the nose of customs into Switzerland. In 1925, it was sold to the Swiss government, and used until 1936, when it was presented as a gift to the German Museum in Berlin. Ernst Udet, another WWI German pilot who ended the war as the second highest scoring ace to survive, flew the plane back to Nazi Germany...swastikas and all.
