Was there or were there plans in seizing key islands in the Mediterranean, such as Cyprus or Malta or even the Balearic Islands that belonged to spain(I know Hearts of Iron IV has a thing where Italy can trade them for resources). Given Malta’s vital strategic point in being able to hinder axis supplies from Italy/Sicily to Tripoli and North Africa, as well as Cyprus’ strategic location for air and naval bases to possibly bomb egypt and such, were there any concrete plans to seize the islands of Cyprus or Malta and could they have succeeded?
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As for Cyprus, the answer was no, for three reasons.
1: Cyprus was too far for the Luftwaffe
2: After the losses in Crete, an island smaller than Cyprus, the Germans perceived any such operation as futile.
3: For the Germans, Cyprus had only offensive value, not defensive, and the Germans attacked Crete from the start because they wanted to secure their flanks for Operation Barbarossa.
Nevertheless, few Italian (mostly) and German planes in 1940 and 1941 managed to bomb Nicosia airfield, Larnaka and Paphos, and mined the port of Famagusta, with very poor results. The British strengthened the local Home Guard and transported few Australian troops, but the island was never threatened.
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I’m currently reading a biography of a leader of the Czechoslovak Resistance by the name of Vladimir Krajina, who had a contact in Germany by the name of Paul Thummel - a double agent in the Abwehr. It mentions, very briefly, that one of the highlights of the messages he passed on from Thummel to the British that the Wehrmacht was moving units from the shores of the Atlantic to the Mediterranian, in preparations for a series of invasions of Crete, Cypress and Syria, all in an effort to reach Egypt and the Suez Canal and cut the supply link between Britain and her colonies in Asia. (Of course, you can sail around Africa, but that considerably reduces the efficiency of that route.) The book mentions that the British were “able to take effective precautions” thanks to the 2 months of preparation time that message had given them.
Of course, how realistic that plan was is entirely debatable. The Nazis had a number of strategic plans that were never implemented because someone realized at some point along the way that there was something that hadn’t been considered that makes them fundamentally untenable. I’ve heard some of the details of the plans for the initial invasion of Britain are pretty ridiculous, because they just assume that total air and naval dominance over the English Channel was achievable and don’t do anything to attempt to account for harassment from those branches of the British military.
So…plans, yes. Concrete? Very questionable. Could they have succeeded? Not when their own intel officers are leaking their strategic plans to the British two months in advance. And not later when that intel officer has been caught, but they’re using a system of encryption that is completely 100% cracked. The Nazis had tremendous difficulties in the intelligence war, both because they occupied such a large amount of territory populated by hostile locals who were prone to resistance movements (or at least to taking the risk of sheltering a resistance operative), and because the British had them so fundamentally outclassed with signals intelligence, turning agents, etc.
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