Although DELAG established a scheduled daily service between Berlin, Munich, and Friedrichshafen in 1919, the airships built for this service eventually had to be surrendered under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which also prohibited Germany from building large airships.

The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily slowed the airship business. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts, resulting in over 500 deaths in bombing raids in Britain. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word zeppelin came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893. The USS Los Angeles, a United States Navy airship built in Germany by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin (Zeppelin Airship Company)ДЄ Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin ( German pronunciation: ) who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century.

Zeplin vs blimp