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Mark,
As far as winners go... history has already shown who won, it wasn't the Allies who came to the signing of the Armistice as the capitulator. Yes the IGAF had good pilots, there is no doubt of that, but when you look at sheer weight of numbers and resources, they were fighting a losing battle from the start. They had neither the population nor resources to keep the battle in the skies going for a long time. It also seems that they too were just as content to wage static trench warfare in 1915. It took two World Wars to show them that the dreams of Empire were a thing of the past. Each time they started out strong, but due to attrition were unable to sustain their drive. Saying that they really were the winners is about as sane as a frontal assault against a heavily fortified defender. The Allies had to take offensive tactics because the Germans already had the benefit of being well entrenched in relatively undamaged areas during WW1. The Germans didn't just overrun the land to say that they were there, they took it for the resources, because in and of itself, Germany couldn't produce the resources to sustain a protracted war. The Allies were just too conservative (i.e. stupid) to take advantage of Anthony Fokker's offer of assistance in 1914. Imagine what the outcome would've been if he had produced planes for the Allies. As it was the Allies still put more numbers into the air than the Central Powers did. At any rate when you look at total numbers of casualties for all sides in that war, there weren't any winners. In the air it was just a small microcosm of the whole "big picture".
As Sun Tzu said in his treatise on strategy "There is nothing to be gained from a long protracted conflict".
As the belligerents in the 1st WW the Germans really lost because after it was over they had no armed forces to speak of due to the provisions of the Armistice. Plus their economy went belly up, and their system of government was forcibly removed (i.e. the Kaiser had to abdicate his throne). So who do you think really won the war???
VBR,
Jim
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