I have noticed that in some cases after crashing, I end up with a good block (usually around 1.3g) still commited to CoH even after it is closed. Have to look in resource monitor under memory to see that.
There's no way to clear that without restarting the system and opening CoH again creates another entry using it's own memory. Just goes along with everything posted before about things being stored in the memory and eventually leading to a crash. I'm inclined to believe it's a problem with Windows not freeing it up after the crash.
Either way, I just figured I'd put it out there that after a crash happens, open task manager and hit the resource monitor button under the performance tab to see if CoH is still in there hogging up memory even after closing. If it is, you might want to just restart your machine to free up that memory since starting a new instance will just take up even more.
(If it doesn't show up in task manager as a running process but is in resource monitor, chances are that right-clicking and trying to end the process won't work...seeing as the process is already ended and all)
*Running Win7 home premium 64-bit with 3 gigs of RAM*