Why the unique rank icons?
We needed something universal to all countries and brances for ease of implementation.  They also needed to be very small, about 16 x 16, and monochrome.  Obviously, US Army sleeve and collar rank insignia had a significant influence.  The articulated collar tabs and shoulder boards/epaulets of many European ranks would not fit within the size constraints.  And, frankly, they are less well understood by most players.

Making them more accurate has its challenges.
The Germany Army might be easy:
http://www.packrat-toyz.com/Reference/heer.htm

But the British would be much harder:
http://www.packrat-toyz.com/Reference/british.htm
To do justice to those NCO sleeve insignia would require much greater resolution and a lot of color.

That is not un-doable.

It would require an artist and some unknown amount of coder love, which are our most valuable commodities.

The question of whether it should be done is more important.  Should we abandon a simplifed and unified rank symbol system that covers all countries and branches for 171 unique rank symbols?

The Rank Titles

The earlier version of the game had 13 ranks from Private to General.  Quickly, we were going to have a LOT of Generals.  Mo tasked me with expanding that structure and adding country and branch-specific rank titles.

Unfortunately, the branches between the different countries do not match perfectly.  The more research I did, the more complicated it became.  You can easily spin yourself into circles trying to force the different systems, with different numbers of ranks but often similiar rank titles in different positions into one system.  So some ranks gut pushed up or down and few, such as the Kriegsmarine's "Generaladmiral" were eliminated.

Looking at it now, there appears to be an oversight that I don't think has ever been mentioned to me: Rank 14 in the Marine Nationale should not be "Colonel" - it should be "Capitaine de Division" as an abbreviation of "Capitaine de Vaisseau Chef de Division."  (Would that be correct, French sailors?)

But that also opens up the whole nest of worms, doesn't it?  "Vice Admiral" should line up across the three navies, but the Marine Nationale has Amiral d'Escadre between Amiral and Vice-Amiral.  It looks like the French navy ranks from Vice-Amiral through Lieutenant should all be raised one, but then what to add where Enseigne was?  (Seriously, I'd like to fix this but need good suggestions based on actual historic information - perhaps "Enseigne, 2nde Classe" for "Enseigne de Vaisseau de 2nde Classe?).

I no longer have all the research I did back when I first looked into all of this, and I haven't been able to locate it all again, but I made the best effort I could to fill the ranks as required with the best information I could find.

We always welcome additional information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_military_ranks_of_World_War_II