While playing just my second game of Europe 1940, I noticed Italy could really boost Axis control over the Atlantic by taking Normandy, rather than letting Germany sweep it up along with the rest of France. With a naval base and IC in Normandy, Italy can deploy ships directly into the Atlantic, defending the coast for Germany and so saving it a fair chunk of change on planes and ships to defend their coasts.
Italy seems to make fairly easy gains in the Med. and Africa, but it’s too far removed from the main fronts to assist the Axis cause. The ships they start with can’t reach the Atlantic until T3, and new ships may never make it there once the US starts intercepting them out of Gibraltar.
At least, I’ll try this out to address the problem I ran into: by T3 Italy’s income was nearly par with Russia, but it only helped themselves.
Has anyone else tried this?