Was Barbarossa inevitable?

So one of the items on your "let's remove this" list is actually not removable. Because if Russia is the Communist SU, then the Eastern countries, especially those bordering with it, and which are not Communist, will be on the same page as whoever seems able to contain the Soviets.
Only if they think they will win.
The changes required for victory to seem too improbable to be worth the risk are not that great. Apart from Bulgaria, who made a risk/gain calculation and tried to stay out of the eastern front (not that it did them any good) the others gambled on the USSR either loosing or coming out of the war with a reduced status.
There was a general undervaluation both of the Red Army resilience and, more critically, of the Soviet State resilience. This was coupled with an underevalution both of the value of US assistance to Britain and of the probability of the US entering the war.
There was an historic bias against Russia in most of Eastern Europe and a more recent (but probably more intense) bias against communism. But good intel can overcome a lot of prejudices.
And it's not a "let's remove this" list. It's a "Let's change this" list.
 
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my speculation is always that Germany could have deployed their producer gas vehicles earlier, saving millions of barrels of oil.

then their trade with Soviets could be centered around grains, pinching their supplies, which were not, unlike their oil supplies, unlimited.

There's the food shortage problem there. The key supply from the Soviet Union wasn't even oil, but grains.
If Germany wants to keep all those divisions in uniform, then it is absolutely certain that the territory conquered up until May 1941 isn't self-sufficient as to food.

my understanding the Med Strategy in part was to arrive all the way to Turkey, at which point a political settlement could have been reached with the USSR

in other words as option to invasion. but that route was dependent on Italy, Vichy, et al? wonder the option of exploiting their already captured Eastern Europe, which they transited thru to attack the Soviets?

the Banat was not black earth of Ukraine, the Ploesti oilfields not Baku but both were already under their control? and some of the Italian troops could be returned to agriculture?

Yes, the route was extremely dependent on Italy, on the too-small Libyan ports, on the convoys etc. I guess that if you are not burning fuel, and losing vehicles and men, at the rate they did in the OTL Ostfront, you might juggle all of that and eventually conquer Alexandria and Cairo, especially if the British generals behave as per OTL. Then going farther, to the Syrian border with Turkey, is yet another massive effort.

As to the rest, oil might not be a terrible problem since you don't push four Panzergruppen around in the steppes, and the Romanians can and were strong-armed into selling at good prices. But the good, underpopulated farmland the Germans had actually conquered was central Poland. Yugoslavia wasn't going to yield a lot, Greece was a deficit (see the first winter's famine). The rest were nominal allies or protectees, and Germany couldn't starve Czechs, Slovakians, Hungarians and Romanians with no qualms, like they soon began starving Poles.

Italy was importing food (chiefly, as usual, wheat and other cereals) in 1939, so sending men back to the farms is useful, but doesn't solve the problem entirely.

Note the Germans must offer good trade to the Swedes and the Finns.

sorry if my post was unclear, I was disagreeing with the historical Med Strategy of pushing across N. Africa and Suez, or rather discounting the prospects of its success. in favor of earlier near absorption and/or division of Eastern Europe, which would be holy f___ mess but less so than invading USSR?

done in conjunction with signing a deal with Vichy regime.
 
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