“ Dresden was Germany's seventh-largest city and, according to the RAF at the time, the largest remaining unbombed built-up area.[36] Taylor writes that an official 1942 guide to the city described it as "one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich" and in
1944 the German Army High Command's Weapons Office listed 127 medium-to-large factories and workshops that were supplying the army with materiel.[37] Nonetheless, according to some historians, the contribution of Dresden to the German war effort may not have been as significant as the planners thought.[38]
The US Air Force Historical Division wrote a report in response to the international concern about the bombing that remained classified until December 1978.[39]
It said that there were 110 factories and 50,000 workers in the city supporting the German war effort at the time of the raid.[40] According to the report, there were aircraft components factories; a poison gas factory (Chemische Fabrik Goye and Company); an anti-aircraft and field gun factory (Lehman); an optical goods factory (Zeiss Ikon AG); and factories producing electrical and X-ray apparatus (Koch & Sterzel [de] AG); gears and differentials (Saxoniswerke); and electric gauges (Gebrüder Bassler). It also said there were barracks, hutted camps, and a munitions storage depot.[41]
The USAF report also states that two of Dresden's traffic routes were of military importance: north-south from Germany to Czechoslovakia, and east–west along the central European uplands.[42] The city was at the junction of the Berlin-Prague-Vienna railway line, as well as the Munich-Breslau, and Hamburg-Leipzig lines.[42] Colonel Harold E. Cook, a US POW held in the Friedrichstadt marshaling yard the night before the attacks, later said that "I saw with my own eyes that Dresden was an armed camp: thousands of German troops, tanks and artillery and miles of freight cars loaded with supplies supporting and transporting German logistics towards the east to meet the Russians".[43]
An RAF memo issued to airmen on the night of the attack gave some reasoning for the raid:
Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also the largest unbombed builtup area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westward and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees, and troops alike, but to house the administrative services displaced from other areas. At one time well known for its china, Dresden has developed into an industrial city of first-class importance ... The intentions of the attack are to hit the enemy where he will feel it most, behind an already partially collapsed front, to prevent the use of the city in the way of further advance, and incidentally to show the Russians when they arrive what Bomber Command can do.[36][44]”
Dresden absolutely was important to German war and transport production by 1945. Stop mindlessly believing the propaganda spewed by both the far left and the far right in order to justify hatred against the West.
Bombing of Dresden in World War II - Wikipedia
