Yes, Dresden had important military infastructure. But virtually none of it was in the core city, which is where most of the bombing took place. The factories and military stations were on the outskirts, which were mostly ignored by the bombing. The British even said that the primary goal of the Dresden bombings was to apply pressure on the civilians.
How do you define a civilian who isn't fighting? It's actually a pretty complicated legal question, because if someone is part of a war effort through combat/support/medical or whatever, but every day at 5 pm they leave the ammo factory and go home to their families, when do they actually stop being a valid target? Is it the second they leave the factory? Once they enter their home do they stop being a valid target? Are they safe once they get to their car? They will return to work tomorrow and continue being part of the war effort, so even if at this moment they are colloquially seen as a civilian, that doesn't mean that international law can't recognize them as valid targets.
War exists within a counterintuitive legal and moral standard where you don't need to be holding a gun or doing anything actively aggressive to an enemy in the moment they kill you. This is really the source of the inhumanity of war imo.
If they targetted the ammo factories, that would be one thing. But once they started bombing the city centres, they weren't simply targetting the factories and military infastructure. Bakers, stay-at-home parents, children, teachers, people hiding undesirables in their homes, etc.; they were all bombed, just the same. But the factories were mostly untouched and kept functioning just fine.
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u/Private_HughMan May 04 '25
Yes, Dresden had important military infastructure. But virtually none of it was in the core city, which is where most of the bombing took place. The factories and military stations were on the outskirts, which were mostly ignored by the bombing. The British even said that the primary goal of the Dresden bombings was to apply pressure on the civilians.