The history of the engineering profession did not end in August of 1914, though at first it may have seemed that way. The national emergency occupied center stage, rather than the paper conflicts and political struggles with management, with other engineers, and with entrenched elites in state and society. As the war dragged on, however, old hostilities reasserted themselves. The VDDI soon established a relief agency for wounded and disabled veterans – so long as they were academically certified Diplomor Doktor-lngenieure. Provoking widespread resentment, this status-based charity was merely the prelude to a concerted attempt at closure and monopoly. In 1917, after Austria passed an ordinance restricting the designation Ingenieur to graduates of its technische Hochschulen, the VDDI launched an all-out campaign for a similar law in Germany. The effort failed, owing to determined opposition from industrial management, state authorities, and nonacademic engineers, who for various reasons all preferred a much broader definition of the profession. Again, during the revolution of 1918–19, the rigid fronts of the prewar period and the last years of the war temporarily broke down. This fluidity led to efforts to make a new beginning, but soon the old cleavages and differences, albeit with certain modifications, resurfaced once more.

Though important work has been done on the history of engineers during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, the profession's history after 1914 remains to be written.