Immortality.

[semmes']

At least this is an abandoned gun...

this one is still stuck to his gun.

Let's see... mortar fire, MG fire and direct HE fire... but yes, the Germans suffer exactly the same amount of casualties.
In the previous game -I didn't capture- it took 2 HE shots for the Russians to abandon the gun, the first killed 5 out of 6 crew members and the second sent the panicking -and pushing the AT- survivor away. The other one was one hit, 3 or 4 casualties and knocked out -I think.
All 4 AT Vet/Low+1.
-At the same time, 2 HE AT shots killed 10 Russians behind exactly the same kind of low stone wall. It is the same anecdote all over every game.

I have to do a test because I think that a side-effect of Leadership is immortality.
I was using Vet/Low-1 Russians -and +1 Germans, I moved to +0 Russians and it is not only that they suffer less casualties -my impression- but that most definitely Leaders and Gunners are less eager to die.
-And yes, the last German+1 in a house (surrounded by the corpses of his friends) is inmortal.

I must say, I spend half the time laughing at what the code is doing.

 

[Bulletpoint]

I don't think there's any difference between the different factions, but I think there are way too many cases where troops fight to the last man.

This should only happen with the most fanatical troops, but it happens regularly with even normal motivation too. One or two guys from the squad just keep fighting. Especially when it's the last guy manning an AT gun.