The slowness is necessary if you want to utilize realistic tactics because the lack of proper AI control. You have to manually move every troop yourself, cause they cant do it themselfs like they would in real world.
But i just love small battles in SP:WAW, with no saving between the turns. One turn takes about 5 mins in small map with 1-2 platoon size groups. Sadly most of the scenario maps are too large and has sometimes even hundreds of units to command.