About two weeks before the end of the World War II the city was almost completely destroyed. 17. April 1945 the American troops reached Eilenburg. It was ordered defense to extremes. Three days and three nights the town was under heavy artillery fire, that destroyed most of the buildings of the city. The meaningless defense killed two hundred people, 90 percent of the City Centre (65 percent of the buildings of the whole city) were destroyed while the American associations had nearly no losses. Eilenburg was one of the hardest destroyed cities in Germany.