@Vendetta said:

Having Germany only able to buy elite infantry that are better than everyone else's is a far bigger violation of realism (as well as game balance) than playing a bit fast and loose with the unit names.

I tend to agree, but then we cannot use "grenadier" as name for a German elite infantry on the account that, from late 1942 onwards, that was the name for the basic infantry, and we are back on square one for what is a good name for a German infantry elite.

At this point, maybe it is better just to call it "elite_infantry". I would suggest that over "sturmtruppen" at least.

@Cernel Acceptable departures from reality, I think. Having Germany only able to buy elite infantry that are better than everyone else's is a far bigger violation of realism (as well as game balance) than playing a bit fast and loose with the unit names.

Germany's average level of unit effectiveness was indeed higher than anyone else's, and if you were narrowing down a list of the most accomplished divisions in the entire war, the Germans would command a very outsized share of it, but still, the German army varied a lot in quality, just like everyone else's, and they raised their own share of mediocre to badly performing units too.

@Vendetta said:

Only alternative I can think of that might be fitting is Grenadier.

I agree, but from late 1942 onwards every infantryman was formally a grenadier. That would work if Germany can only buy elite as its "cheapest" infantry (which would be fine if we want to picture the assumed basic German tactical superiority). A game starting in mid 1941 could have "grenadier" as the cheapest German infantry (but with cost and values of an elite infantry), meaning that Germany can only buy elite (called "grenadier") as infantry units, anticipating by a little more than 1 year the formal naming and picturing the German army as an all-elite infantry thing. That would be arguably fine, but it is a choice. It's disputable how much elite the basic German infantryman was with respect to others.

Cernel said:

Even if you do not have paratroopers (right?), I guess you can have the Fallschirmjäger as the name for the elite German infantry, as they are maybe the most obvious case of what an arguably purely elite infantry may be. The problem with that, however, is that they were very few in numbers in 1941. They became an actual main thing as an elite infantry of Germany late in the war.

To be clear, not having paratroopers and having Fallschirmjäger as elite infantry would be perfectly fine starting in June 1941 because almost all of them would actually never fight as paratroopers (some major exceptions), so they were actually much more elite infantry than paratroopers.

I'm not sure how many of them were even trained as paratroopers from 1942 onwards, so I'm going to ask Google AI right now "What was the percentage of Fallschirmjäger actually trained as paratroopers from 1942 to 1944?" The answer is

There is no single, exact official percentage recorded for the entire Fallschirmjäger branch between 1942 and 1944, as jump-qualification rates varied drastically by division and year. However, historical records show a steep collapse from nearly 100% jump-qualified in early 1942 to under 10% in newly formed divisions by mid-1944.