Flee battle is your friend.....

And first turns as US are brutal along this axis. You get hit with a heavy tiger battalion 501. If you go with the historical moves your hosed just like what happened. If you apply actual strategies of what you do when you are getting hit with a superior force you can win the campaign. Hint, shrink your lines and dig in on defensible areas on the OP map. Any where you see lots of hill elevations on the map is generally good. Any where without is flat and bad to defend against massed tanks that out number you.

Also this part of map is kind of boring to look at.

I STRONGLY recommend playing German campaign 1st. US campaign takes a good grasp of game features and really good tactics.

BTW the game is pretty great. while some spots on the map are boring and flat, most is anything but. Rolling desert, mountains, a few towns. If you know how to operate in a rolling desert vary rewarding. German where known to exploit these areas vary well. Dashing from one low area to another and setting up hull down on reverse slopes or setting anti tank guns with murderous kill zones. You can also infiltrate with infantry quite well following the lows spots and elevation differences to get infantry really close to enemy without getting seen and spammed with arty.