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All Germany (or Italy) had to do was block off the very narrow inlet to the Med, and that whole area became secured, the Italians could concentrate on building ships, the Germans would have a secure route for supplies to North Africa and things would have been very different. As I understand it, Spain was supplied by Nazi Germany during the inter-war years and the government was at least friendly towards Germany, so why did Germany stop at France? It would have been trivial for them to keep rolling right in, secure the Med entrance and win the war... ...what am I overlooking?

1) The narrow inlet to the Mediterranean is distinguished by a British territory called Gibraltar. It houses a naval base and garrison, and given the narrow width of the Straits of Gibraltar, makes it perfectly placed to cut off the Mediterranean. In order to control the Med., the Germans/Italians would have to capture or destroy Gibraltar, something they did not have the capacity to do.

2) Even if Gibraltar is removed from the equation, the Germans/Italians would still have to neutralise British-held Malta, which housed naval and air forces and sank a huge quantity of Axis shipping – something they failed to do despite continuous and massive air bombardment.

3) The French/Spanish border is an extremely inhospitable mountain range highly unsuited to the type of armoured warfare Germany favoured.