Yes and no, I think it is wrong, and that is just my opinion.
I can respect the fact that people can reasonably disagree on the matter.
It kills a bunch of civilians and makes them homeless, but as far as the war effort , I don't know.
It did, but as stated, the effects were more indirect.
When Hamburg was largely burned to the ground in July of 1943 it had a tremendous psychological impact. Albert Speer stated that another half-dozen German cities wrecked in the same way in short order would "bring Germany's armaments production to a total halt." Erhard Milch stated that "If we get just five or six more attacks like those on Hamburg, the German people will just lay down their tools, however great their willpower..." But the RAF couldn't replicate what it had done at Hamburg, so Germany recovered. As it was some four months' of war production was lost in the city. That's not inconsequential. (Whether that was worth the cost in lives is another calculation entirely.)
More generally, the European bombing campaign produced the following effects. Quoting from
The Crucible of War 1939-1945 by Brereton Greenhous, Stephen J. Harris, William C. Johnson, and William G.P. Rawling:
...was the extent to which the bomber offensive against Germany constituted a 'Second Front' long before the Allied invasion of Northwest Europe, and even when only Bomber Command was heavily involved in it. In terms of manpower alone, the Germans used between 500,000 to 800,000 workers to repair bomb damage and organize the dispersal of vital industries, labourers who could otherwise have been involved in the direct production of war materiel, while the Flak arm required some 900,000 men in 1943 and was still 656,000 strong in April 1945 - many of whom might otherwise have played a significant part in the ground war.
The enemy was also forced to allocate considerable equipment to air defence. In March 1942, as the German army was fighting critical battles in Russia and Bomber Command had not yet launched its first 'thousand' raid or its initial battle of the Ruhr, there were already 3970 heavy Flak guns deployed around German cities which could have been made into mobile artillery or bolstered anti-tank defences in the east. By September 1944 that number had grown to 10,225. Indeed, according to Albert Speer, of the 19,713 88-millimetre and 128-millimetre dual-purpose Flak/anti-tank artillery pieces produced between 1942 and 1944, only 3172 could be allocated to the army for use in the anti-armour role because of the pressure of air attack. Similarly, the threat posed by Bomber Command's night raids meant that the German night-fighter force accounted for a consistently increasing percentage of Luftwaffe front-line strength - more than 20 per cent of the total in December 1944. Several hundred of those on strength in late 1943 and 1944 were machines which could have been used to great advantage in other roles on other fronts.
There are some noteworthy indirect effects in the above. Were those effects worth the cost in human lives? That's the harder question to answer. I personally would answer yes, because war is hell and whatever one can do to shorten the hell likely means fewer deaths overall.
I like the part in Speer's bio (I think thats where it is ) where an Allied commander tell him that it would have been more effective if they had just killed Speer. (In regards to teh ball bearing campaign)
The idea was sound—ball bearing production was one of the key choke points in war production. The problem was that at the time the USAAF attempted to knock it out it did so with an insufficiently strong bomber force (it wasn't really grasped just how many bombers were needed to truly knock out a target) and without long-range fighter escort. So that the results were ultimately disappointing should not be surprising.
The Allies were also misled in their bomb damage assessments. They get the post-strike photos of a target, see all kinds of wrecked buildings, would conclude the target had been destroyed, cross it off the list, and move to the next target. Only it was often the case that the damage on the ground was not nearly as severe as it looked from the air. So a wrecked facility wasn't really wrecked and production would be resumed in relatively short order.
The Allies also left some potentially decisive targets off the list. There was no campaign against the German electrical supply, for example, even though a sustained effort against it could have produced results as decisive as those obtained in the attacks against oil and transportation.
