In his 1981 book, "The Persistence of the Old Regime", Mayer argued that there was an "umbilical cord" linking all events of European history from 1914 to 1945. In Mayer's opinion, World War I was proof that "losing ground to the forces of industrial capitalism, the forces of the old order were still sufficiently willful and powerful to resist and slow down the course of history, if necessary by recourse to violence." Mayer argued that because of its ownership of the majority of the land in Europe and the middle class were divided and undeveloped politically, the nobility continued as the dominant class in Europe. Mayer argued that challenged by a world in which it was losing their function, the aristocracy promoted reactionary beliefs such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Social Darwinism, together with a belief in dictatorship and fascist dictatorship in particular. In Mayer's opinion, "It would take two world wars and the Holocaust [… finally to dislodge the feudal and aristocratic presumption from Europe's civil and political societies."