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The Germans were only so victorious because of their manipulating skill, widespread fear of Communism
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Basically the germans were so victorious are the start of the war because they had actually been preparing their country for a war while the surrounding nations only reluctantly increased moderately their defense budget. In September 1939 Germany had the most numerous and efficient Army when compared to Britain and France, and was at near full production for the next years. France and specially Britain had only recently started increasing war material production (Britian focused in airplanes, which luckily saved them later in the summer of 1940), hence Hitler started the war earlier than he had first planned, and than he had told his generals (1946 was the original plan IIRC), because he knew that in September 1939 he had a slight advantage, but with the attitude change in Britain and France by 1946 that advantage would have been eliminated.
A good proof of this is the comparison with WW1: In 1914 all nations in Europe were more or less equally prepared for the war, and what happened? They got all more or less stuck in the middle of the way between them, Belgium. Yes WW1 was different in many aspects, but ultimately it was a more balanced clash than WW2 ever was. WW2 saw a dominant germany at the beginning and a dominant allies at the end. There was almost never a balance, unlike in WW1, and hence the forth-and-back nature of WW2, as opposed toe the static nature of WW1.