Battle of Hamburg (1945) siege by the Soviet Red Army, refused to send reinforcements. The Germans managed to resist the British in Bremen for a week; the surviving troops retreated to the Jutland peninsula. The last remaining defence was the city of Hamburg and the Germans sought to make a final stand there. After capturing Soltau, the British 7th Armoured Division of the VIII Corps was poised to assault the city. The British advance towards Hamburg was spearheaded by the 7th Armoured Division, attacking Harburg and advancing to the River Elbe across from Hamburg, with the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division assaulting the town of
The Destruction of Dresden "Wie Deutschlands Städte starben" ("How Germany's Cities Died") which Irving wrote for the German journal "Neue Illustrierte". In the first edition, Irving estimated that the two RAF raids and the first USAAF 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. Irving's first edition figures became widely accepted and were used in many standard reference works. In later editions of the