From the first, Ober Ost was a showcase for pathologies of power, which caused the state to seize up just when it seemed that its rule was being made permanent. Interlocking crises overtook the administration's contradictory functioning, the political consciousness and national identity of natives, and the identity of Germans in the East. These emergencies flowed together to seriously affect political developments in Ober Ost in 1917 and 1918, ending with the collapse of the ambitious edifice of power as Imperial Germany itself went down in defeat and revolution. Failure, coming at this highest pitch of ambition, produced lasting consequences for German views of the East.

In 1917, Ober Ost's machinery rumbled on toward a grinding impasse, while more insightful officials looked on helplessly as the administration undermined its own goals: the way in which many policies were executed destroying the aims they were to effect. After Hindenburg and Ludendorff were elevated to the Supreme Command on August 29, 1916, the spirit they had built into the state worked on. Chief of General Staff Falkenhayn had finally been ousted after the unremitting and jealous intrigues of the eastern generals were joined by forces in Germany's political leadership and parliament. By the summer of 1916, Germany's position was seriously embattled, everywhere on the defensive, food in short supply as Britain's blockade intensified, and its allies seeming of little use.