Germany, 3rd March, 1933: The nation stands on the edge of history. Appointed President of the Reichstag in January 1933, Adolf Hitler immediately used the Weimar Constitution against the nation itself, and dissolved parliament, calling for new elections. How will the elections fare, and who will win?

Settings
Normal AI and Normal aggression, which may result in ahistorical results at times but is a more fun gameplay experience overall. The AI will have more of a spine, essentially.

Production
Go to the production screen and cancel all the ships under construction - they cost precious I.C. (industrial capacity) and will be of little benefit to the Kriegsmarine. Next, on this same screen, set your resource auto-management to stockpile money and oil. Reduce IC for reinforcements and upgrades to 0 and right-click the sliders on the bars to lock them in-place. You want to have as much IC set to Consumer Goods ASAP. This reduces dissent and produces money, which you really need right now. Set convoys to auto-everything and move on to tech.


Technology
Technology will come later. For now, tech research costs too much, and you need money to fire events. I have never had any problems letting it ride until 1934, and you shouldn't either. When you do begin to research, pay attention to the specific sub-skills of each tech-team to pick the best team, overall skill is good but if they only know one thing about the tech, they will research slower than a team with worse skill that knows more. For instance: say you have a naval tech with 3 naval and 1 org requirement, so you stick Rundstedt on there because he's level 9. Great, except he has 1/5 of the skills, so will research all but those with a penalty. But if you chose a naval team with say, 3/5 of the skills, you get the tech much, much faster. Do note that ahead-of-time penalties are significant. This is where decisions come into play...

Intelligence
Reduce intelligence funding. I like to reduce it by two levels which yields +.5 money per day, which can add up pretty fast. You can safely increase this after you've fired the last event to require money (MEFO bills). For now all efforts will go towards building up dosh for decisions. Don't have it set to auto-mission, or your money will be spent on spy activities instead of accumulating in your coffers!

Production Again
Go back to the map, and sort provinces based on resource production, and begin building about 90 IC worth of factories going from the most resource rich provinces down. Each factory is worth 5 IC, so you're looking at 18 factories. Set them each to build for 4 years - this will shorten over time to 3, which will let you add more factories to the serial run. You can get a considerable IC boost by 1937 this way. I like to cut off Production in 1937 - but generally, it takes about 5 years for a factory to pay for itself (I read this somewhere, I'm sure). So if you produce until say 1938, your last factories will make up for the cost of making them by 1943. That's a little late. Unit recruitment takes longer in this game, as well, so you may find it worth it to stop IC production earlier. Up to you, but I found going to 1938 is risky.


Politics
It's best to move towards full CP before the war and away once you've started. Set your auto-move towards Central Planning.

Dissent
"Holy crap there's too much dissent!" you might say. Events will knock away a lot, as will copious investment in Consumer Goods, but at some point you're gonna have to enact Conscription events to raise your manpower pool. There are various approaches to this - you can fire it ASAP or you could do it when a major dissent reducing event is around the corner, like Anschluss. Either way, you're looking at +12% dissent for max conscription. This will give you around 1000 MP - don't get impressed, most of it will be gone before the war starts.

A note on "Extra IC"
Once your first run of factories finishes in '34, you'll notice you have a bunch of extra IC in Consumer Goods. What to do with it? You can either leave it there to get rid of dissent, if any, or use it to start producing units. If you can afford it, now is a good time to set up a long serial run of Interceptors, Infantry or CAS.

1934
Not much really happens here. You get an Austrian Coup Attempt option sometime later in the year. Fire that and you have done all you can for the year.

1935
This year you get the "Creation of the Wehrmacht" event. You'll be given 57 out of date, badly under-strength divisions.

Why would you want such worthless fodder? Simple - played right, these will be the most advanced and toughest infantry in the world when the War starts.

Set the stack to Priority Upgrade, and forget about it. Do NOT allocate IC to upgrades until you have finished producing your factories - you can easily put it off until January 1939 and still have them all upgraded in time for war sometime in the summer, I've never had it take until September, personally.

Don't even split them up, just leave 'em in Berlin for a while. You want these though.

1936
Order an infantry or cavalry unit near the border to move to the Rheinland area on the map, and fire Reoccupy Rhineland.

Once Rhineland's been reoccupied, wait until the SCW starts. You'll want supplies for the decisions associated with it - if you need them, trade some cash (which you should have plenty of) for supplies with Italy, or Japan, who gives you great deals. Do a straight lump sum trade of one resource for the other through the "Open Negotiations" option on the diplomacy screen.

You have the option to control the SCW and help Nationalist Spain win. I recommend it for a few reasons: 1, it gives you something to do in the painfully boring Interwar period, 2 you can get valuable experience in fighting in Darkest Hour without any cost to Germany, 3 if you win and the Nationalists win, they can later be offered Morocco after the Fall of France in exchange for joining the Axis - which makes seizing Gibraltar and cutting off the Mediterranean a cakewalk.

1937
Italy will end the Stresa front this year, and if the Austrian Coup event fires in this year you can Anschluss early. Otherwise this is the year your factories come online. As they do so, start building up your airforce and panzer/motorized forces first, with long serial runs of whatever infantry you can afford afterwards.

Your best bet for Airforces is Interceptors, Close Air Support. Interceptors are cheap and effective against allied Bomber formations, and CAS is cheap and great for, well, close air support.

What about the Navy?
You have two options for a naval strategy: subs and naval bombers or a surface fleet that can match the Royal Navy. The fleet option is expensive and lengthy and will require considerable investment in the Pre-War era and is not recommended unless you know what you're doing or until after the Fall of France. You can easily build a sub fleet for cheap and in time for the war, which makes it an attractive option, but it requires microamangement on your part to be effective.

1938
This year is when Austria fires usually in the first two months of the year. 180 days later, you'll want to have at least 1 unit on the border provinces with Czechoslovakia, so you can fire "Treaty of Munich".

Note: there's a small chance Czechs will tell you to stuff it and you'll be forced to choose between backing down, or invading Czechoslovakia. Neither's really a great choice, but War is obviously the way to go. Be sure to have at least enough troops on the border of the Czechs to stop them from breaking through anywhere, and if War happens, upgrade your Wehrmacht stack BEFORE firing Partial Mobilization, and hold on for a while. The Allies will not get involved (unless you're at war for too long and your beliigerence gets too high - then they will eventually declare on you). Once you have the upgraded units, crush the Czechs. Alternatively, use f11 and type "Acceptall" to force the AI to accept any demands before firing the event. This avoids the war entirely. I believe their chances of accepting are decided the beginning of the month, so you could just reload and get lucky.

Foreword: How to Blitzkrieg
You may be familiar with the concept of Blitzkrieg, but not know how to execute it in-game. Here's a brief step-by-step on the basics.

Step 1: Achieve air superiority by telling your Interceptors or Fighters to sweep the skies.
Step 2: Bomb enemy soldiers in the line of the advance with the Ground Support mission. Use "province" selection in the order pop-up to bomb specific provinces.
Step 3: Use overwhelming infantry might at your chosen points for the breakthrough to break the enemy's line.
Step 4: Order your mobile units to rush through the gap created by your infantry, and to fan out far behind enemy lines, potentially endangering their lines of supply. Tell your infantry to fill in the gaps while your mobile units run rampant behind enemy lines and cut off enemy strong points.
Step 5: Crush enemy resistance in the pockets, if necessary to achieve victory. Rinse repeat the above to success.

Additional Tips:
ALWAYS have a garrison of some kind on your airbases. This is a painful lesson you don't have to learn the hard way. If a partisan revolt happens and you lose your entire air force, it will sour your mood, and that's putting it lightly. Always keep a unit on your airbases if you have airplanes there. Period.

Control the airspace over your active ports.

1939
This is it: the year you go to war. Start off by demanding territory from your neighbors north of Prussia, and once you have that province (is it obvious that I can't remember its name?) go ahead and fire Nazi Coup in Danzing. You're now free to declare war at any time.

Westwall
You want to have at least 54 divisions on the border with France, and a few Cavalry (the three or four you end up with will do - don't produce any unless you want to use them more extensively) as mobile reserves. Anything less than at least 54 divisions on the border is inviting your doom. The French will look for a weakness in the Westwall and push through if you're not careful.

Fall Weiss
Your goal is simple: seize all Polish Victory Provinces asap so that you can annex them.

Prussia
Ideally you'll be attacking Poland from three directions: Germany, Prussia and Slovakia. The main thrust will come from Germany (naturally), but the other two thrusts are just as important. You can easily encircle Warsaw from the north, for instance. So, I recommend having at least enough units to hold onto Prussia - 12 infantry minimum, 6 per province - along with Panzers and Motorized Infantry to blitz through Prussia. I usually make Prussia the second strongest flank of my attack.

Slovakia
Down here are two objectives, Krakow and Lwow. You can use regular infantry to take Krakow without losing speed, but I think a single tank or motorized infantry division is all you really need down here to take Lwow.

Germany
Make a straight run for and around Warsaw, and worry about that VP province once it's surrounded and thoroughly bombed. Make sure to keep an eye on Danzig, the Poles will fight hard for it in the beginning and you can hold off their attack by having units in Danzig or by attacking the provinces bordering Danzig.

Your invasion should be over in about two weeks.