@serition You're not cheated. a) It's charity. When have you ever given to charity in real life expecting awesome returns. b) It unlocks more rewarding quests down the line.
There is awesome level progression. If you're referring to the high-AP katana bandits near Caganel and Drushlak, they are beatable by 1 person with a rifle (might take a hit or two). They're the toughest bandits in the Southeast, and you should hire on more people fairly early on anyways.
Auto fight would be bad... ruin the whole strategy element of the game. It's not like there is an infinite amount of people to use, so there's almost no strategy in pre-battle stuff besides equipping weaponry (by the time fights start getting boring, you should have endless amounts of rockets/grenades/machineguns).
The person that picks up the crate gets exp equivalent to 3 kills. And if your enemy picks up a crate, they have another wave instantly with no tactical points for you. So even if you get useless stuff, it's still worth it.
SEALS under the name Navy SEALS weren't in existence prior to 1961, and therefore, didn't exist during WWII. But their predecessors were. None of them were involved in Operation Luttich or Operation Cobra, though.
Got to wave 103 by just arming all my soldiers with M1 Garands, calling in new soldiers, arming them with M1 Garands, etc. Then a flak panzer killed all my soldiers. :D
As the overall commander, you can order them to do a lot of things, like moving around. You should be able to tell them to hold their fire or concetrate fire w/o an officer.