Do not take Rhineland focus (causes 5 percent WT). Managing the WT to do this can be a little tricky and does not work 100 percent of the time due to Soviet or Italian volunteers being sent to Spanish Civil War (also do not send any of your units as volunteers). Almost all the other countries annexed using your strategy can be annexed through the focus tree for the most part (do align war economies, not German war economy), conquering them early doesn't let you abuse their man power either. Sweden gives you a ton of steel, tungsten and chromium.

If the timing works out right Japan might not even bothering to declare war on you because they will likely be losing the war. Garrisoning about 100 divisions in the DEI will prevent Japan from taking the land and Japan isn't much of a threat to you as Germany since they will be fighting in China and against the allies. By the time Japan declares war on you for occupying the DEI you can have approximately 500 divisions using their man power. As a result of being fascist when their manpower gets low, they can bump up to higher and higher manpower requirements. The best part is when you satellite DEI as a fascist country they turn fascist. You can recruit all of your army from the DEI, keep your manpower on extended conscription for the entire game and have a 15 million man army. However, the manpower pool from Dutch East Indies is insane. Holland is extremely useful to take out early. That is a decent strategy, though I normally prefer annexing Holland and Sweden prior to the 25 percent WT cut off.

All that means is more Syntehtic techs in the meantime and more imvasions into the USSR and the Middle East. The only considerations nowadays is that USA MAY choose to use the European Intervention, which may mean war early with US. Here is proof of what Germany could do on Elite Mode along with Italy annexed for funsies. The Allies do not care about countries at war until around 40-50% The ONLY thing you have to be careful about is to declare on your first pair and then beat them to submission BUT DO NOT CAPITULATE THEM UNTIL your second wargoals are ready to declare immediately. See below and edit the name Italy with whatever European country that is dirty fascisti or dirty commie enough to justify day one or turn to those ideologies by mid 1937 at latest. In fact this was the basics of my Italy WC run and it has not changed still. With just two wargoals, you can outright annex ALL these countries by mid-1937 and then proceed further to annex even more parts of Europe for funsies and no Allied interference until YOU choose to go to war with them. To fully abuse it to hell, you can annex all Czechslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, AND Greece/Turkey depending on your preference and naval reach. Your Balkan Combo is only halfway implemented.

This is not as good as Germany can get and this DLC has changed nothing to stop it.

Hearts of iron 3 germany guide