its worse than that. heres the cliff notes of what ive learned. dresden was a rail hub. but it was hardly used for military transport. what it was used for was bringing supplies to the internment camps. I think I read that there was a single AA gun stationed there. Hitler did tell the commander in charge of the area to put more defense there but he never did. the allies are responsible for the 127,000 jewish deaths at the camps and the other 125,000 various nationalities at the camps. they bombed dresden because they said it COULD become a threat. they said the chocolate factory could be repurposed to make explosives, they said the eyeglass workshop could make sniper scopes. and so they bombed it. not once but around a dozen times. and they bombed it the same way we bomb terrorists in the middle east. The bombings started on a friday night around 10pm. then they would come back at mightnight and do another run. this stopped people from trying to rescue trapped survivors. eventually the people of dresden would walk a couple miles out of town on a night of bombings and watch there town burn. dresden was also home to many poles, ukes, ruskies so after they fled dresden some ended up in internment camps themselves. did the allies know the rail lines supplied the internment camps? maybe. it was an idea to punish jews who were unwilling to move their new homeland it seems plausible. The allies never expected Hitler to surrender. they had many plans they wanted to put in fruition. many demoralization tactics of poisoning the food air and water of civilians.