ORIGINAL: 76mm
Actually, there is a third school of thought, which is that introducing achievable auto-victory conditions will lead to more interesting gameplay, by causing German players to take more risk (so far I seem to be the only student in this school however).
As to your second point, I get the distinct impression that many (certainly not all) of the German players just are not very interested in the defensive phase of the war and lose interest after 50 or 100 turns of a slogging, rather tedious Sov offensive. This is kind of understandable, because it takes a long time for the Sov army to create the offensive capabilities to do anything but slowly push the Germans back hex-by-hex, which frankly must be rather boring for the Germans. I think that part of this tediousness is caused by conservative German play in 1942-1943, since they have no incentive to attack.
Therefore, my thesis is that introducing easier auto-win conditions will make the game more fun for everyone...
You are not alone in this. I believe in this school of thought as well. The current victory conditions are way too far out to entice the German player to stick his neck out after the ~17th turn.
ORIGINAL: pzgndr
A retro moment. From page 32 of the manual for Gary Grigsby's War in Russia: The Matrix Edition
VICTORY CONDITIONS
Players receive points for capturing certain enemy cities. Victory conditions are checked at the end of each turn. The game will end automatically whenever either player has captured enough cities to guarantee victory. The campaign games end in July 1945 if neither player has captured enough cities; the shorter scenarios have various ending dates.
Automatic victory was possible for either side, back in the day. Players played accordingly, and all was well. Now, all is not well??
It bears noting that the victory condition in War in Russia are quite different from War in the East:
The German player needs 5 victory points to win. Moscow is worth 3 points. Gorki, Leningrad, Saratov, Stalingrad, Grozny and Baku are all worth one point each.
A German War in Russia player would have triggered his auto-victory condition just by taking the "Big Three" - Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad.
A German War in Russia player, in the event of not being able to pull off an auto-victory, would also not need to hold on for as long as he would have in War in the East, given that WIR ends in July 1945 while WITE ends in Sept 1945
EDIT: For completeness' sake, the Soviet player needs 4 victory points to win. Berlin is worth 3 points. Hamburg is worth 2 points. Nurnberg, Vienna and Prague are worth 1 point each. WIR's Soviet victory conditions are arguably harder than WITE's, as making it past the pre-war borders will generally give the WITE Soviet a minor victory, but anything less than taking Berlin herself in WIR will result in a draw.