Mayer stated that one purpose of his in writing "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?" was to put an end to a "cult of remembrance" that, in his opinion, had "become overly sectarian". Mayer has often accused Israel of exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to further its foreign policy objectives. In his opinion, Hitler's war was first and foremost against the Soviets, not the Jews. According to Mayer, the original German plan was to defeat the Soviet Union, and then to deport all the Soviet Jews to a reservation behind the Urals.