Re: German ranks
Well Chuck, I think you're forgetting two things here. First that most SS divisions raised in the war started out as smaller formations, usually either legions, regiments or brigades before being upgraded to division status. The second is that the accepted size of divisional formations dropped significantly during the war. All of the divisions in the list I give were at some point or other actually formed as a divisional formation (taking into account the difference of the size of divisions at different periods of the war).
If you want to add all the formations that didn't reach divisional status or divisions that were planned but never really formed the list would be much longer.
Also the lesser quality unit usually weren't short lived either. The prinz Eugen division for example was raised as early as march 42 and fought till may 45 but its troops weren't exactly the best around.
Your examples of what happened to some of these formations illustrates my point perfectly. The quality of SS formations ranged from units fighting to the death to units that were disbanded after some time due to high desertion rates (and in a few cases even acts of mutiny). Most were in between these extremes for most of their existence. In other words, a general 'no surrender' rule for the SS doesn't seem to be in order for the game. And divisions fighing to the death doesn't mean that all individual members fought to the death, it means the formation fought on till it had no one left. But the losses could have come from many different factors, including surrenders by individuals or smaller groups.
As to the brigades of the SS-VT you mentioned earlier I'm still not sure what these mean. Maybe these are in fact the regiments that made up the SS-VT division after it's formation in '39. The unit was not used as a division for the invasion of france in 1940 but was split up. The motorised infantry regiments were given some of the other divisional units (artillery, recon, etc) giving each them brigade status. After the campaign they were merged again into a division, the brigade status being merely a temporary thing.
As to the kampfgruppe Nord thing, maybe that's something misunderstood by a source (of a source) somewhere as some of the SS field units served with Army Group North for Barbarossa.
The 17th SS fought against the US army in Normandy btw, not the british and canadians.
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