I kind of agree; the Panzergrenadier units seemed to integrated at a pretty low level (battalion or brigade)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzergrenadier#World_War_II_usage
The US army integrates its armoured brigades at the
battalion level on the modern battlefield. Does anyone know what the basic operational unit was in WWII? Because it seems like a whole brigade (or several of them) with no support infantry wouldn't be able to punch holes in the enemy line on a tactical without risking destruction by highly-entrenched enemy inf. So they would then need to go up to the divisional commander (radio, or slow messengers if they arent equipped with sending radios) and ask for some infantry from the pure inf brigades to be brought up as a detachment. Seems like a brigade commander would want some of his own grunts to boss around at all times to keeping up with his tanks for duties like this.
Basically, it just seems like the smaller the basic unit of maneuver (brigade instead of division), the down the combination of arms at a tactical level which would give you an advantage, no?
The further down units are integrated, the better performance you get from experience working together, but the less flexible the units are. It doesn't matter for the game because the division is the smallest separate unit.
Note that those panzergrenadier divisions comprised two panzergrenadier regiments (each three battalions), an artillery regiment (3 battalions), plus an armored battalion (probably StuGs) and a panzerjaeger battalion (probably Marders). Plus other supporting arms, recon, engineers, etc. That doesn't mean that in combat they lined up by battalion with six mech battalions all in a line with two TD battalions lined up next to them. It just meant that a battalion commander nominally was in charge of a one-branch force, and they formed combined arms units at battalion level by shuffling their components around.
So Col. Abrams was the CO of the 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th Armored Division. Let's say it's August 44, which means the 37th is in Combat Command A along with the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion (plus an SP-arty battalion and companies of engineers, AA, TDs, recon, etc.). Theoretically, he's got four tank companies under him, in practice what happened was that his tactical command was "Task Force Abrams" with, say, 3 tank companies and 1 armored infantry company from the 53rd, with the 53rd's commander forming Task Force Jacques with the remaining 2 armored infantry companies and the 37th's other tank company. CCA as a whole might get bulked up by more units, which in turn would make for larger and/or more task forces. For example, in late September, CCA had three task forces and had roughly doubled in size because it was the focus of the Battle of Arracourt and the division commander had reinforced it.
It's not about whether a regiment/brigade is mixed in the TO&E, they pretty much invariably weren't. It's whether the division formed the necessary combined arms teams for use in combat.
