Looking back through history, it seems like the desire of most European empires was to emulate Rome in holding France, Italy and (West) Germany ... Rome -> Charlemagne -> Napoleon -> Hitler?
So my question is pretty simple, are there any records or myths of a planned German invasion of Italy? And did Hitler ever have a plan to declare him the equivalent of Holy Roman Emperor?
The premise of this question may be headed seriously into speculation territory that this sub usually does not like.
All I can say is that no compelling evidence has been found that Germany ever did any serious preplanning work on a potential invasion of a Mussolini led Italy. Certainly no proposals or estimates on the scale of an invasion of Britain or even Switzerland for example.