The Destruction of Dresden

The Destruction of Dresden is a 1963 book by British author and Holocaust denier David Irving, in which he describes the February 1945 Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II. The book became an international best-seller during the 1960s debate about the morality of the World War II area bombing of the civilian population of Nazi Germany. Despite having long being praised and held in high esteem, the book is nowadays no longer considered to be an authoritative or reliable account of the Allied bombing and destruction of Dresden during February 1945. Origins The book, an international best seller when published in the 1960s, is based on a series of 37 articles about strategic bombing during World War II titled Wie Deutschlands Städte starben (How Germany's Cities Died) which Irving wrote for the German journal Neue Illustrierte. Deaths In the first edition, Irving estimated that the two Royal Air Force raids and the first U.S. Army Air Forces raid combined were "estimated authoritatively to have killed more than 135,000 of the population [of Dresden]..." and the "documentation suggests very strongly that the figure was certainly between a minimum of 100,000 and a maximum of 250,000". In 1965, General Ira C. Eaker identified the number as 135,000.