High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Destruction of Dresden is a 1963 non-fiction book which describes the February 1945 bombing of Dresden in World War II. The book is based on a series of 37 articles written on the strategic bombing during World War II by David Irving called Wie Deutschlands Städte starben for the German journal Neue Illustrierte. The book became an international bestseller during the 1960s debate about the morality of the World War II area bombing of the Nazi Germany civilian population. In the first edition, Irving's estimates for deaths in Dresden were between 100,000 and 250,000 - in 1965, General Ira C. Eaker identified the number as 135,000.