I guess those 100+ Soviet Divisions crossing the German/Polish border had nothing to do with it...
The Soviet offensive had stalled mostly due to the troops being routed through Dresden.
One of the reasons why Zhukov held off on taking Berlin was because the Soviets were taking so many casualties on the southern part of the front they'd opened that he wanted to hold troops in reserve.
Dresden and its rail systems were a lifeline for the Nazis and delayed the fall of berlin.
As it was, the time line went like this:
Dec. 16, 1944 through 25 January 1945: Battle of the Bulge. The costliest battle for American forces of the entire war in terms of the numbers of soldiers killed over the space of time. 19,000 in five weeks.
13-16 February 1945: Dresden is bombed. Dresden was a recognized center for communications and transportation for the entire southern eastern front. Many of the refugees were soldiers who were reprovisioning there. It was also the largest German city left entirely intact throughout the war. It was bombed on night by 800 British bombers and then two days by 500+ American aircraft. 35,000+ people died...some estimates are much higher, nearly 70,000. At the time, clear reports indicated that German moral, both militarily and civically was crushed by the report, both near and far.
8 May, 1945 V-E Day. Almost 3 months after Dresden.
Do not get me wrong. I have great affinity for the German people as a whole. I have many relatives from there and many friends. I talked to many people during the two years I spent there in the mid-1970's, living on the economy. The vast majority I spoke with admitted at the time that as a people, they had been mesmerized and led, willingly, down the primrose path by Hitler and his cronies. They recognized that it led to their abject and total defeat...and the destruction that was wrought upon them.
At that time, they did not blame us in the least. They recognized that theblame lay with the tyrants who came to pwoer, and to them for not seeing it, despite Hitelrs own writings. They also knew that if they had not lost...the entire world would have experienced a decent ito probably the darkest hours of its entire history.
As with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dresden was an awful necessity of war that punctuated the allies' will in total defeat of the NAzis. That point was made and taken...and, IMHO, it also worked.