View source for Costa Bravo Involvement in World War II

The turn of the twentieth century brought about Costa Bravo's perpetual, and persistent, arms race with the world's other superpowers. It was a key player in World War I, the outcome of which was greatly, yet arguably, influenced by Costa Bravo's immense [[Costa Bravo Military|Aeroforces]]. Costa Bravo, of the Allied Powers, had thousands upon thousands of fighter planes at its disposal, due to the magnitude of it's manufacturing sector. The country was also renowned for its technological advances on the warfront, famously constructing the virtually impregnable CBT Mark III, a tank similar in appearance to the British Mark V series. Costa Bravo was also involved in a variety of heavy naval engagements throughout the Mediterranean.

World War II was another principal venture for Costa Bravo. An integral participant of the Allies, yet again, Costa Bravo was prime real estate throughout the war. Had Hitler and his forces captured Costa Bravo at any time in the war, a conquest in Northern Africa would have been assured. Costa Bravo, for the Axis, would have been a tactically gigantic conduit into Africa. However, due to, again, Costa Bravo's industrial might and innumerable infantry forces, Costa Bravo warded off the handful of invasion forces the Axis sent its way. Costa Bravo participated in numerous key engagements through the war, including D-Day and MARKET-GARDEN, among others. As in the previous War, Costa Bravo's industrial might precipitated victory after victory on the battlefield.
{{Image|http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/4033/costabravoww2infantryrf8.jpg|right|Costa Bravo WW2 Infantry|A Costa Bravan infantryman during World War II.}}

After a particularly crippling defeat at Ravenna, Costa Bravo lost a considerable amount of its aero- and naval forces. It never recuperated from the loss, and lost every successive major battle -- at Cagliari, Cairo, Dzhankoy, Cyprus, Saarbrücken, Port Said, and Freiburg. Without much opposition, Costa Bravo was invaded and occupied by Mussolini's forces in September of 1944. Mussolini's forces pounded the northern coastline for three days, until Costa Bravo's primary line of defense collapsed and the Axis finally broke through on September 16, 1944. This Axis victory was one of the most monumental losses Costa Bravo experienced upon the battlefield in the twentieth century, and was later named "C-Day," a play-on-words of the famous D-Day engagement at Normandy. 

From there, the Axis drew a conduit into Africa, and, as such, Costa Bravo became even hotter property for either side of the war. Months after the occupational force drew into Costa Bravo, in January of 1945, Stalin's forces invaded Costa Bravo and retook it, imposing order and, since the government had been all but destroyed and executed by Mussolini, the Soviets took emergency control of the country. Although they re-instituted the Costa Bravan government in 1947, the USSR briefly regarded Costa Bravo as a colony of their own, and kept an ever-watchful eye trained on the nation. Their presence became so pervasive in those few years that almost two-thirds of the populace claimed Russian to be their primary mode of communication, and Cyrillic eventually became the standard writing form. Over the years, the cultural and social presence has diminished, but still 1/3 of Costa Bravo's citizens consider Russian their first language, and public signs are often written in Cyrillic, due to the simplistic (and consequently cheap) style of lettering.