A not insignificant part of it was irredentist claims to areas inhabited by various 'Germanic' peoples such as the Goths based on archaeology of the time. Areas covered by what are today termed the Wielbark and Chernyakhov archaeological cultures were associated with these 'germanic' people and seen as areas stolen during the migrations by, at present at least, the Slavs. Such as it was, during the invasion eastwards, various places were renamed like Simferopol to "Gotenburg" and Sevastopol to "Theodorichshafen", reflecting this ideological justification.

Post war the old völkisch ideas of migration faced heavy criticism (in no small due to their use in Nazi propaganda) seeing eventual reform with the origin of the Vienna school of thought and criticism of ethnoarchaeology such as Kramer's 1977 “Pots and Peoples”.