Hi guys!

I just did a full world conquest with SWR Germany. If you want to be strict, it's not completely legit, as I used console commands to declare wars on the countries remaining after the 2WK, cause I didn't want to wait for 100 days justification each time and play until 1956.

On one hand I wanted to share this achievement, additionally, I want to share the main steps I took to win the 2WK. This would serve both as a guide to newer people, and as a forum for discussion on the optimal strategy for Germany. I don't claim infallibility, in fact I invite any fellow Germanophiles to share how you win the 2WK even more efficiently.

1. Choice of paths: this time I went with SWR. I've seen people claim that this is the weakest Germany path, as DU has higher quality military, while Schleicher has infinite manpower. However, I found SWR to be quite good as well, you get plenty of manpower in you go for DVLP path (Harbinger of Reaction modifier), and I find dealing with Hugenberg less annoying than dealing with Bavaria as Schleicher or the right wingers as DU. But I think all 3 paths are effective and fun.

2. Prioritise economy above everything else. First task is to get rid of Black Monday. I found Plan Tarnow-Baade to be the better option for that. In the beginning you won't be able to produce that much anyway, and don't have wars to fight (except ones you volunteer in), but building a ton of factories will make your economy snowball later on. Additionally, the card massive public works, which gives you 200 points for both categories for each building built is OP. I regularly get 2000-2000 points per turn, meaning I barely have to invest cards.

Don't bother with focuses reducing inflation, you're alright

I personally don't bother with the industry focuses requiring pp investment (the ones on the left side). I find that I rarely have the pp to spare. I just take enough to have 5 investments done for the war preparedness act.

3. For this run I went SWR, so skipped Schleicher's political focuses and just made the Ruhrkamp explode. For some reason I found that it's next to impossible to get SWR in power through a vote of non-confidence, which I was easily able to do with DU. I'd love to hear tips on how to do that.

Even if you want to play Schleicher, you should skip his political focuses. It's surprisingly easy to block both parties from gaining power before the Enabling Act.

Don't forget to get the friendly Zentrum chairman, whatever faction you play as!

4. I usually just take a few of the more useful political focuses, and go over to military, as you don't have nearly enough time to take everything before the war. With SWR, I just took the three focuses needed to fight Hugenberg than went to military, and only came back to political focuses after I was done with the more useful military ones.

With Schleicher you can similarly skip over most of his political focuses, just take a few with good modifiers, but the military ones usually help you more so are worth to prioritise. With DU you don't have the luxury cause of their special mechanic.

5. The wars of the Mediterranean. I'm talking about the Spanish and Italian civil wars and the Balkan War. These are of utmost importance. If you win all of them, it's impossible to lose 2WR, if you lose all of them, it's impossible to win. 

Spanish Civil War: first one to fire in my experience, around the beginning of 1937. You won't have enough xp yet to make good mountaineers, so just try to make 30w (9inf 4art) inf divs from your starter inf divs, and make do with them. Support the Carlists, as the Kingdom of Spain never joins the war, while the Carlists join, even though they do on the side of the Entente. But that doesn't matter for us yet, we just want to win 2WK.

Balkan War: fires almost immediately after Spain, so you will have to divide your attention. Again, you won't have xp for good mountaineers, just send inf. Bulgaria is usually weak, it's a dice roll if it's possible to win the war for them. I had more luck when I began focusing on Serbia, but it doesn't always work. Bulgaria sometimes joins the Donau-Adriabund instead of the Reichspakt, but that works for us as well.

Italian Civil war: fires at the beginning of 1938, you will have enough xp to send good mountaineers, so do that, as large parts of Italy are mountainous. Send to the Italian Republic/Federation/State, the Pope and Sicily as well. In my experience, Sicily joins the RP, and green Italy joins the DAB. Unfortunately they usually don't join the war before you are done with France so this doesn't mean an additional front for France.

ANI (Italian State) unfortunately joins the Moscow Accord, so that would be great to avoid if possible, but they are still preferable to the socialists, as they don't team up with France and don't send divisions to their border.

I don't think I ever won all three, so don't be worried. If you get 2/3 you're set. The most important one is Spain to open a second front against France, the second most important is Italy so that France doesn't get reinforcements from there, and the third is the Balkans, as Serbia and Romania are not that hard to contain.

4. The actual war. Don't forget to check if your templates are meta! Sometimes if you're stuck, the problem is not Kaiserreich specific, you just don't have meta div templates.

Focus on France first. If you take them out, nobody else will be able to stop you. Russia usually doesn't advance that fast. The Oststaats are quite good at resisting, but if you want to, you can throw a few armies of just inf+engineer (perhaps support art) defense-only divisions to help hold the line. They are easy to produce.

Anyway, don't worry if they take a lot. The furthest I let them get is OTL post WW1 Germany borders (Silesia and Pomerania). If France is defeated and your whole army can attack Russia at the same time, they will shatter, no matter how far they came.

Go crazy on air. The AI usually produces thousands upon thousands of planes, so do the same, as air superiority always wins. Add anti-air to your divs as well.

If you've prepared accordingly, you shouldn't have a problem with defeating France. If they still put up a fight, use oblique order: put just one army to defend your border with France, and put everything else on the Belgian border. As the AI is stupid and spreads out evenly always, this will mean that they don't match your forces on either flank. They overdefend the French-German border while underdefending the Belgian border.

After you've defeated France, you can easily land in Britain. Usually your starting navy is enough for naval superiority. Their land forces are miniscule compared to yours.

Next step is Russia. Make/convert to motorized/mechanized divs to drive through the enormous land area, make encirclements and capture supply hubs. But you're kinda set at this point, Russia doesn't have a chance against the entire RP, the question is only how fast you win.

With these strategies I win the war 100% of the time and usually get done by mid to late 1941. I hope this helps a few beginners and I'd be very open to any suggestions from veteran Germany players, I'd love to optimise my runs even more.

Deutsches Weltreich - literally (+guide and discussion on the optimal strategy for Germany)