Well, as I said it was also push back against the longstanding 'othering' of 'Eastern' Europe that started with the Enlightenment. (See Larry Wolff's Inventing   Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment This trope reached its most virulent form in the German Ostforschung tradition. Interestingly, if you look at the Adenauer period, you see the notion of Germany as a bulwark against the Asiatic Slav hordes being reconfigured into a tool of furthering European integration and opposition to traditional national-konservativ and voelkisch constructions of German national identity.