WI: Italy takes Greece without German involvement?

What if Italy was able to take over Greece without German involvement. The Greeks, surprised by the Italian attack, are never able to form a cohesive defense. How would that change plans for Barbarossa, I heard the intervention in the Balkans delayed the invasion. Could that have led to more success in the invasion?
 
What if Italy was able to take over Greece without German involvement. The Greeks, surprised by the Italian attack, are never able to form a cohesive defense. How would that change plans for Barbarossa, I heard the intervention in the Balkans delayed the invasion. Could that have led to more success in the invasion?
Italy would have to be much more thoroughly prepared, which was impossible since Mussolini dragged Italy into war in 1940. Italy's military was severely outdated and it was a miracle they made any gains in Greece's mountainous terrain. Unlike Albania and Ethiopia, Greece was extremely trained fighting in the mountains. So Italy taking Greece clearly sets Axis victory possibilities down by quite a large margin. Now, if Italy invaded Yugoslavia instead, then victory is more assured and quick and Barbarossa can proceed as planned.
 
Surprising the Greeks would be nigh to impossible for the (main) same reason why the Italian offensive petered out so easily: Italy was attacking from Albania. That's like, say, if the USA wanted to attack Canada, they moved from Alaska.
The logistical build-up was definitely insufficient in OTL, and impossible to miss; a sufficient build-up would be hard to do given the realities of the Albanian infrastructures (ports, warehouses, roads - or better, lack thereof), and totally impossible to hide.

That said, the Balkanian diversion delayed Barbarossa a couple of weeks, if that. Most of the delay was due to the bad, rainy spring weather which would have mired the German offensive anyway, and due to delays in their preparations.

An advantage for the Axis of the Germans not getting involved there would be the spare units; a couple of Panzerdivisionen, the paras, a couple of crack mountain troops divisions, a handful of infantry divisions. Then again, the logistics of Barbarossa were already stretched to the point of rupturing in OTL, so one wonders whether the Germans would have really benefited from the above.

The real advantage, however, would be a neutral Yugoslavia and a neutral Bulgaria. That's a belt of neutral airspace isolating Ploesti from the Med. The British might well decide to violate that neutrality, after all in OTL they showed they could be less finicky than one would expect with that sort of concerns; but not soon, and the USA might be against this. Assuming, of course, that the fall of Greece does not whet Mussolini's appetite and he doesn't also jump onto Yugoslavia.

Naturally there's the reverse of the medal for the Axis. If Greece falls to the Italians, then the British don't send stuff there, which in turn means they'll probably end up in Tripoli regardless of what the Germans can do to help the Italians in North Africa. An Allied-controlled Med coastline from Turkey to Tunisia means bad news for Italy in the long term. It also makes the success of Torch much more of a foregone conclusion.
 
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