Those who say "let us do evil so that good may come" are justly condemned.
Incorrect.
I'm afraid not:
"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. We shall not, for instance, be able to get housing material out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans themselves. I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction."
Winston Churchill, 28th March 1945 memorandum to Air Marshall Arthur "Bomber" Harris (n.b. post-Dresden raid)
I'm going to assume that you are playing devil's advocate and are not actually as morally bankrupt as these statements imply.
And deny yourself all the pleasures that moral vanity affords? Don't strain yourself.
The point is that the bombing of Dresden, far from being evil, was morally justified.
If I need to kill a bankrobber to prevent him from killing more hostages, I am not "doing evil so that good may come", I am doing something decidedly unpleasant but morally just.
The quote from Churchill implies that he - who was not engaged in day-to-day military planning - was under the impression that bombings were undertaken for purely psychological reasons.
He was unaware - unlike Eisenhower and George Marshall - than the Allied bombardment of Dresden involved only 16% of the bombs dropped in the air raid on Cologne, which was a city of comparable size and area.
No one today claims that the death of a confirmed 40,000 Germans in the bombing of Hamburg were an atrocity or a war crime.
Yet the 22,000 confirmed deaths at Dresden receive that label - why?
Because the people of Dresden were fed continuously with Red propaganda that Soviet troops were only benign liberators while the evil capitalist UK and US were monsters who targeted Dresden for no reason. The people of Cologne, West Berlin and Hamburg were not fed such propaganda.
In your Churchill quote, Churchill addressed Arthur Harris, the man who directed the UK bombardment (and who was Frederick Anderson's boss) - Harris' assessment of Dresden was "a mass of munitions works, an intact government center, and a key transportation center."
And deny yourself all the pleasures that moral vanity affords?
I revel in your sense or irony.