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The topic is fiercely debated.

Cities full of civilians were targeted on both sides, with London, Hamburg and Coventry also the target of significant bombing.

Those who argue that the attacks were legitimate claim that the industrial scale of the conflict and civilians’ role in producing weapons made major areas of military industry legitimate targets.

Others argue that targeting the morale of the civilian population would pressure the German government into submission and thus save more lives than it took.

However, many believe the bombings were not justified and claim that the circumstances of the war, with Germany on the retreat, rendered the levelling of the city uncalled for and done as a means of retribution than military necessity. 

Some also claim that the types of bombs used, some incendiary and some of which were on timers, designed to provide secondary explosions as rescue efforts began, mean that this attack was a war crime.

Victor Gregg, a British prisoner of war in Dresden in 1945 who lived through the Allied bombings of the city, described the onset of the attack in the Guardian in 2013.

He said:  “As the incendiaries fell, the phosphorus clung to the bodies of those below, turning them into human torches.

The screaming of those who were being burned alive was added to the cries of those not yet hit. There was no need for flares to lead the second wave of bombers to their target, as the whole city had become a gigantic torch. It must have been visible to the pilots from a hundred miles away.” 

“I still suffer at times the memories of those terrible events.”