I don't deny for a moment the amount of dead...that was true, but they were all heavily armed. There were massive stockpiles of arms moved...enough so to arm to the teeth almost 100,000 civilians who were the first line of defense before the 62nd ever got there. Yekomenko ordered the evacuation of all non combatents (read children, sick, pregnant and old) out of the city on 24 August, 2 weeks before the Wehrmacht really arrived but several days after the first major bombing by the Luftwaffe...that killed 40,000. As a matter of fact, over 10,000 civilians were butchered by the Luftwaffe while on the docks, waiting evacuation. The civilians were trapped between the cliffs and the docks with Stukas dive bombing them....pure murder.
The part of the old woman trying to get on the boat and being pulled off is bogus.
A lot of the fighting was done with hand grenades. If you read Enemy at the Gates, the Russians were seeing the same thing about the Germans. One Russian platoon held out for a week in a department store. The survivors said that the fountain outside the store was covered with german dead from the body waves they were doing across the square. They finally fell when their recoiless rounds ran out and the Germans did a major tank push.
Beevor is a Russian historian. At Stlingrad men went into battle without arms. That is a fact. Russia lost a million men at stalingrad alone. That is an amazing number. German machine gunners taken captive by Russians said it was pure murder in the waves from September to October 1942. What are you defending? The Honor of the Red Army? There were many heroes from the Red Army- but also many who were murdered by a sick pysocopath who ruled Russia at the time - forced into battle without arms and either butchered by the Germans or the SMERSH stopping groups.
There is a popular Russian film about Chechyna- I think it is called "war"/ Have you sen it? MY opinion about Chechyna is that Russia should let them have their "independent" state. Why not? Russia would dominate it anyway. It would be like a Carribean country is to America- totally subserviant. Why is Russia fighting there? They should make Chechnya her bitch at the UN.