The facts about Dresden’s status as a military target:

Dresden was an important industrial center with over 100 factories and industrial enterprises that employed 50,000 workers. These factories made armaments (shells and ammunition), torpedo parts, aircraft parts, field radios and telephones, steering elements for U-boats, specialized turbines for the Navy, X-ray equipment, and precision optical instruments. There was also a poison gas factory and a factory for anti-aircraft guns in Dresden.

Dresden was also a key junction in Germany’s railway system, with rail lines radiating from the city in all directions. In 1944, the Nazis installed special tracks and platforms to expedite supplies to and from the city’s major armament factories. Many of these armaments traveled directly into combat zones on the Eastern Front. There were four freight yards and four main railway stations, all of which were used for military purposes and, thus, were legitimate military targets.

By February 1945, Dresden was only 90 miles away from the Eastern Front. This fact further increased Dresden’s importance as a transit point for military traffic to and from the Eastern Front. For example, a total of 28 military trains, carrying almost 20,000 men and officers, passed through just one Dresden train station each day. Destroying these stations and rail lines, as a means of disrupting troop movement to the Eastern Front, was a military aim. Dresden was also an important river port and a center of freight traffic on the Elbe River, one of the major waterways of Europe.[2]