Comments or opinions - anyone?
If I recall correctly, this bombing was done to placate Stalin. The Russians requested it. It is said that the city was full of refugees at the time. Since the Germans were down to their last rounds, it didn't have much effect on the outcome. "Slaughter House 5" comes to mind as a resource.
The Blitz was the sustained bombing of the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941 in World War II. It was carried out by the Luftwaffe, and hit many towns and cities across the UK, but the main attack was concentrated on London. The Blitz killed about 43,000 people and destroyed more than a million houses.
Germany defined the terms. No matter how crappy civilian deaths are, Germany had not capitulated yet. VE and VJ days were both preceeded by substantial damage to cities.
The author omits, if I recall correctly, that the U.S Air Force followed up with a raid during the next day.
Goebbels asked for "Total War," and he got it.
Dresden had a lot of old wooden structures, so the town burned to beat hell. As someone mentioned, "Slaughterhouse 5" was inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's having lived through the bombing as a POW, and for that matter may have led to his having become a writer in the first place.
Strategic bombing in WWII was shown (even during the war, to some extent) to have failed to make much of a dent in German industrial output, in part because Germany used so many underground facilities, and also in part because the bomb accuracy was pretty poor. Luis Alvarez discusses this in his memoirs, which I'm reading right now; there's an article by Freeman Dyson in the recent Technology Review (I think that's the name of the mag) regarding his work for the Allied aerial bombing efforts that sort of overlaps. Omar Bradley discusses the lack of bombing accuracy including friendly fire type losses both in the invasion of Sicily and in Overlord and Cobra.