Interestingly, your "Churchill quote" refers to footnote [46], the book, Dresden, by Frederick Taylor which defends the bombing of Dresden.
Frederick Taylor's well-researched and unpretentious book is a robust defence of the Dresden raids that counters recent attempts to recast the nation that gave the world Auschwitz as the second world war's principal victims, attempts that stretch back to the time of Goebbels.Other footnotes which are on the Wikipedia web page which you cite (such as #13), contain rebuttals to David Irving's book on the Destruction of Dresden, which is filled with inaccuracies. David Irving is a Holocaust denier and a Dresden liar.Undoubtedly, the most fascinating theme, which Taylor does successfully develop, is how, and why, targets were acquired by RAF and intelligence planners. He convincingly rebuts - one hesitates to write 'demolishes' - the legend that Dresden was purely a cultural centre, since even the (neighbouring) Meissen porcelain manufacturers had been converted to produce military teletypers ...
Taylor skilfully interweaves various personal accounts of the impact of the raids on the permanent or temporary population of Dresden, including its slave-labour force.
But the main thrust of his book is to defend a mission that was merely successful rather than exceptional. It came at the conclusion of a long war that, while generally brutalising and dulling moral sensitivities, also had clear enough justification in the fight between good and evil’
Irving’s account of the bombing of Dresden manipulates and invents material, misinterprets documents, and gives weight to unreliable documents. He also gives undue weight to eyewitness testimony when it suits him, and falsifies statistics in order to put the behaviour of the Allies and particularly Churchill, in a negative lightYa gotta see the big picture once in a while, if you want to survive in a world which has real "bad guys" You don't want to end up on the side of the Holocaust deniers.
The easiest way to determine the truth is by admissions against interest.
Churchill's admission that the RAF was terror bombing is an important admission. The Air Secretary's admission in "Bombing Vindicated" that Britain started the terror bombing of civilians is an important admission. Analysis by historians trying to contradict these admissions years later is worth far less than the admissions by important British persons as to what really was going on at the time.
For a modern example, if OJ had admitted that he killed Nicole and Ron Goldman (an admission against interest) and years later a writer puts out a book saying that OJ didn't kill Nicole - who would you believe? OJ or the writer "researching and reasoning" why OJ really didn't kill Nicole or Ron Goldman years later?