Now, after conquering Poland, Hitler again sought peace with England and France. But this was, politically, not possible for the British and French governments because they felt certainly - understandably - that they would look like total morons in the eyes of their people, having launched a war and then end it. So the state of war progressed.
Now, Germany's situation was really very dire. In late 1939, they got a big surprise from their new friend, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, in return for supplying vital raw materials for Germany, demanded a huge amount of military supplies, including advanced military supplies from Germany. The Germans rejected the first request, but they eventually did sign a very, very costly treaty with the Soviet Union, and agreed to turn over a good part of their high-technology weapons in turn - not all of them, obviously - but in terms of specific aircraft and so on to the Soviet Union.
Meantime, Britain and France were plotting an invasion of Norway. This was supposed to be a masterstroke that would cut off German iron ore supplies. In the middle of all this, the Russians invaded Finland. This turned out to be a very difficult situation for the Soviet Union, and the invasion did not go very well. This had particularly negative implications, because it gave Hitler a greater sense of the German ability to attack the Soviet Union since this had gone so poorly.
Meanwhile, Norway, Sweden sent aid to the Soviet Union, and France and England considered sending aid, but they had gotten themselves into such a mess of having started World War II that they did not. Now, in Norway, there was a debate about what to do, because Britain was trying to force Norway into becoming a part of its war effort, and was also violating Norwegian neutrality. So their number of political factions in Norway. The major faction wanted Norway to remain neutral; other factions wanted it to side with either Germany or England. One of the factions seeking Norway to side with Germany was headed up by a man called Quisling, who went to Germany and probably played a major role in convincing Hitler to invade Denmark and Norway, which is what Germany did in early 1940.
In what has to be considered absolutely masterful military campaign, it's not at all clear that the surrender of Denmark was prearranged. It basically surrendered almost immediately, and the Danish government was allowed to remain in power. If possible, the Norwegian government would've followed a similar route, however to the fury of the Germans, their so-called "ally" Quisling went on Norwegian radio announcing that he was setting up a government. And this caused the Norwegian government to decide to fight the Germans. Nevertheless, in spite of overwhelming British naval superiority, the Germans were actually able to take over all of Norway. This was the first in a series of truly appalling studies and blundering incompetence on the part of England and France.
Now, worse for them was yet to come. Even though they had total military superiority on the ground, Germany in May 1940 managed to win a spectacular victory in really about 30 days. Now part of the main part of this was gross incompetence on the part of the English and the French. A lot of it though was sheer luck on the part of the Germans, and having to punch a hole in the British and French lines at the Meuse. Anyway, France surrendered on June 22nd, and France got a fairly generous peace treaty from the Germans. The French were able to keep their empire, keep their fleet completely independent of Germany, and they were able to have a completely independent state in so-called Vichy France, and were able to preside over the civilian administration of France in the German-occupied Northern France and the Atlantic coast part of France.