TIL that stating the above opinion is harshly unpopular, but from all of the books and classes I took, since this is one of my favorite time eras, they suggest that bombing a city so much that it creates firestorms may be a bit excessive. What are the thoughts on this? Is everything I learned, from the many (5+) historians on this, wrong?
This topic is heavily politicised. Often, far-right, neo-nazi and holocaust deniers try to overemphasise Allied war crimes and place them as the linchpin of their arguments. I once met an Alt-Right man who told me that 200'000 people had died in the bombing of Dresden, and that only a handful of Jewish people had actually died in the Holocaust.
Now, Dresden's bombing likely resulted in 20'000 to 30'000 deaths, and millions died in the Holocaust.
Because of this predominance in certain circles - a lot of historians and history-enthusiasts have a knee-jerk reaction when this topic comes up - as they're used to seeing the issue being erroneously used for political reasons. This is likely why you've seen this position (that Dresden is a war crime) be so unpopular.
Whilst it can be argued, and fairly convincingly by many academics, that certain Allied actions like the bombing of Dresden and the firebombing of Tokyo meet the criteria of "war crimes" - they do not make the criminal actions of the various Axis nations any less horrific or widespread.