Indeed. In bizarro axis-win world there would be:Italy doesn't have anything south of the Mediterranean that Germany really needs or wants. Germany has Russian oil etc.
OTOH Germany is going to eventually want Italy to do things Italy is uncomfortable with and expect compliance. More of a "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further." situation.
- an incompetent set of tyrannical madmen ruling everything north of the alps from the Atlantic to the steppes,
- a set of slightly less vicious but even more incompetent tyrants running all the impoverished backward bits round the med and down the Red Sea
Pretty quickly things will devolve into a familiar looking ”special relationship“ where Italy can do whatever it likes so long as it’s unimportant, but otherwise does exactly what Germany wants.