Except... it doesn't.
There's a huge difference between a high health and high armor unit.
It actually makes a difference only when fighting guaranteed penetration units like PaK43, ele or JT.
In that case, HP is better.
Against anything else, each bounce adds additional "hp".
Lets take StuG shooting at churchill and at IS-2.
Lets assume its on max range, so 170 penetration.
Vs churchill it have 58% chance to penetrate. For easier calculations, lets round it up to 60%.
Vs IS-2 it will have 45% chance to penetrate.
Vs churchill 6 out of 10 shots will penetrate and it needs 10 penetrations to kill it.
On average it needs 17 shots.
Vs IS-2 it needs 7 penetrating shots and 4,5 out of 10 shots will penetrate.
On average it needs 16-17 shots depending on armor RNG.
It means against non guaranteed penetration, current high hp and lower armor is the same as lower hp and higher armor, it all depends on how good the gun is, but anything with less then 100% penetration should work like this.
It means
Doctrinal wise Axis may rely on designated "super high" pen units, which won't work properly vs. this unit.
It means huge alpha damage weapons with low DPS are less effective then faster firing weapons with lower penetration. It means you want to have 2 fast firing medium AT units then single heavy one.
A pair of StuGs>>single panther.
Pair of JP4>>JT/panthers.
When combating churchills.
Same goes for flanking. A high hp pool is way less prone to flanking / rear armor shots.
Just think about this for a second: you need twice the rear armor shots on a Churchill, in comparison to a KV series, or any other "Heavy". Not 5... 10 penetrated rear armor shots. That's not a slight difference anymore.
True that, but that only further proves my point, multiple fast firing lighter AT units are better against them then single big slow firing ones with huge penetration.
And last but not least: Relic use, more or less, certain HP values for certain tank classes, and those < 40 ton Churchills just don't fit in with 1600hp, at all.
It's not intuitive, and doesn't make any sense either.
Relic simply went for asymmetry here.
If they went with the "old way", we'd have 1040 hp 350-375 armor churchills.
Late war churchills outclass KV-1 by a long shot in both, armament and armor, frontal armor specifically, MK VII had more then Tiger on the front.