The specific Bombing of Dresden in Feb 1945 had no bearing on whether the allies would win the war. The Germans had exactly zero chance of winning the war by that time. We are not talking about the very effective strategic bombing campaigns against German synthetic fuel plants and ball-bearing plants in 1943-44; not even talking about the very effective tactical employment of B-17's like at the opening of Operation Cobra in July 1944, flattening the best German armored division Panzer Lehr in carpet bombing; not even talking about the less effective but necessary bombing campaigns against German aircraft and other munition factories; not even talking about the costly air campaigns against Ploesti oil fields in Romania in 1943. We are talking about one specific bombing raid that took place in Feb 1945, very very late in the war, when the German war making capacity was already crumbling; a raid that had destroying the civilian refugees crowding the city and the civilian infrastructure as the primary target, in a misguided attempt to "shock Germans into surrender" and ending up stiffening German resolve to fight on, just like almost all the other "shock the enemy civilian into surrender" attempts undertaken by both sides previously during that war.
The bombing left many of the factories on the outskirt of the city, and the rail center on the outskirt of the city largely untouched.
The bombing certainly did not cut the time. Goebbles used the incident very effectively to convince Germans to fight on.
The bombing did not reduce Allied casualties; if anything, some allied POW's were killed directly in the bombing. Others may have died in the following weeks as Germans re-allocated food, clothing and rail capacity to feed and shelter German refugees from the bombing instead of feeding POW camps. That's one of the reasons why many Allied POW's (not inmates of death/extermination camps) were found utterly emaciated when they were finally liberated.
The outcome of the war was very certain by Feb 1945. Bombing Dresden would not and did not impede transfer of German troops from West Front to the East; railcars had to make round trips anyway.
The idea that command decisions made in war time can not be analyzed or assessed at later time is a little preposterous: why study history at all then? If the sole purpose is hero-worship, then no realistic historical study is necessary, myth-spinning would suffice. One of the most important lessons learned in WWII was that the pre-war Dohetian theory of using aerial bombing to shock the enemy civilian population into surrender simply did not work. That's proven as early as in 1940, when the London Blitz took place. Mass slaughter of civilians simply did not work; such atrocities only caused enemy civilian population outside the slaughter zone, that's the other 99+% of the population, all the more outraged and determined to fight on. The B-17 and B24 capacities would have been far better utilized bombing worthwhile military targets, including both factories and enemy field formations. Those targets were also farther west and closer to allied bases, so more bombs could be carried while risking less bomber crew losses.
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