In Poland in 1939 and in Western Europe in 1940, the German army defeated its enemy’s quickly. Was this only because of the Blitzkrieg tactics used?

Next came Denmark and Norway, Hitler wanted to take over these two for a few reasons, one of these he called <insert German name here>, or "Living space", this basically meant that he wanted more room for the ever growing German race, so to do this he would take this space of Denmark and Norway. First they invaded Denmark, Blitzkrieg was also used here and the Danish army gave up fighting after only 2 days, this just goes to show how successful Blitzkrieg could be. Norway however took 3-4 weeks to conquer. The Norwegians, all though took longer to be conquered, were still very much overwhelmed by the German assault, their armies were unprepared for such an attack, as has been the case throughout the whole war, the Norwegian leaders had ignored warnings that Hitler would attack them, which would have given them valuable time to prepare for a battle, news on how Hitler attacked Poland could have proven vital in Norway's tactics, but alas their leaders didn't listen, making for another reason why the were defeated. However, due to these two battles taking around 4 weeks, other countries such as Britain and France had more time to prepare themselves for a German assault, this would prove vital for the allies success. The next few countries on Hitler's agenda was Holland and Belgium, once again Hitler used Blitzkrieg tactics to accomplish this, and was once again helped along by their far superior army and air force, and also how unprepared the other countries were, even though they had had all this time to prepare for a battle with Germany, also Britain and France did nothing to help them in the battle, so once again Germany had a quick victory.

After this came Germany's most impressive victory, against the mighty nation of France. Once again Germany catches France unaware using Blitzkrieg tactics, however he knew he couldn't attack France straight off, like the French had expected him to, because they had built a massive line of fortifications stretching along the French German border, which they relied on to stop any attack, even though the French leaders had been warned that Hitler would try and attack else where, they had everywhere squared, or so they thought. This "Maginot Line" however, ended at Sedan, where the French believed that Hitler could not attack from due to the dense Ardennes forest that was there, they were so sure that no army could get through that their protection of the area was short to nothing, Hitler knew this and so therefore sent a massive squadron of his army there. They stayed here from the invasion of Poland to when they eventually invaded France, all the time remaining undetected. When the Germans did attack France, the victory was swift, the French army, which was also weak and out of date compared to the modern German one, fell fast under the might of Hitler. Britain had sent in troops to help, however they to were swiftly defeated and had to retreat and needed to be rescued of the shore by the navy, a thing which all though was an obvious failure was celebrated as a successful rescue by the British newspapers, ignoring the army's defeat..

So as you can see there were many different reasons why Germany was so successful in the early years of the Second World war, and yes, Blitzkrieg was a big reason, however the German army was extremely prepared for this war, they had been preparing for over 5 years in advance, and therefore had a far superior armed forces to the other countries, and had had a huge amount of time to plan out exactly how to conquer the countries, so therefore Blitzkrieg tactics would probably never have been thought of if Hitler hadn't had the time to plan such a war, something which could have been prevented if the League of Nations had done something to stop him as soon as they realised he was breaking the terms of the treaty and re building his army. But alas they just stood by and watched as the German army gradually became a very powerful foe. Another reason for German success was how unprepared the conquered nations were for such an attack, mainly because they had had much less time then Germany to prepare for a war, so most of their military tactics and machinery were out of date and unchanged since WW1. So overall I believe that the main reason for Germany's early success was due to the major difference between the times the countries had to prepare for a war.

Consequences of this success was that other countries, like Britain for example now had a lot more time to prepare for a war which they would know how would be fought, this proved very helpful as it allowed Britain enough time to rebuild its army to resist the forthcoming German attack. Other consequences could have been that this made Hitler to overconfident about his army's ability which could have led to bad decisions like the invasion of Russia, something which turned the tide of the whole war.