The demo setup is kinda whack, it's 1939 but Germany has WWI tech in a number of areas, especially the industrial technologies.
On my first run through the demo I decided to act ahistorical and see what would happen if Germany invaded Belgium and Poland at the same time as opposed to waiting for the Poles to fall and then focusing on Western Europe. In the east I just let the AI handle that theater, Danzig was taken quickly, Warsaw took about a month and after almost two months Germany had eaten half of Poland.
In the east my guys rolled through Luxembourg and went a few provinces into Belgium but after the Dutch mobilized their army the AI (again I let the AI handle this theater but I did detach a several divisions to take a little control in some areas) decided that the Dutch-German border needed to be protected. This took needed troops away from the French-German border and I hate to even post this but the French broke through my lines and got halfway to Munich before some of the troops I brought over from Poland arrived
But what I did was more for fun, I just wanted to see some things happen before four months were over even if my strategy was a bit stupid. I wound up stopping just before November, I'll try using Germany more historically next time.
Italy was kicking France's butt, which seems to be the rule going by other people's experiences on the Paradox forums, in several pictures posted Italy was taking all of what would become Vichy France. I didn't bother with naval combat at all (I want to slowly get the hang of this, there's a lot more to keep track of than EU) so there wasn't any interaction with the British except for my fighters vs. their bombers.
The game also runs at an inconsistent speed for me, sometimes the hours will go away by the second, other times each hour is taking 5-8 seconds. EU3 doesn't run so hot on my laptop either despite being comfortably above the required specs. I'm having trouble deciding air on whether to get the game asap, after the first patch, or after the first expansion pack. I'll be lurking over on the Paradox forums for the next week to see how much others are enjoying the game.