Tim Keeley makes a fair breakdown of Germanic languages with their difficulties and peculiarities... and those of the people speaking them.
The question "How many Germanic languages exist" is even difficult to answer. Dialectal variation makes some local language variants not mutually intelligible. Swiss German is notably difficult to understand for speakers of Standard German. Moreover there is quite some accent variation between the dialects spoken in different valleys, which only Swiss German speakers seem capable to overcome.
Swiss German speakers do understand Standard German but generally refuse to switch to Standard German when answering. Native Swiss speakers of French or Italian do not share this peculiarity.
Even a less spoken language as Frisian has a high dialectal variation due to the geographical distance among its speakers. West Frisian spoken in the Netherlands province of Friesland differs from the critically endangered languages Saterland Frisian (spoken by a few thousand people across the Dutch border in Niedersachsen, North-West Germany) and North Frisian (spoken in Schleswig Holstein close to the Danish border). Despite its shared linguistic origin with Old-English, West-Frisian is now more easy to understand by native Dutch speakers. This illustrates how geographical proximity favours the emergence of a dialect continuum.
The three Germanic Languages eventually suggested to learn for an English speaker are German, Dutch and Norwegian. German provides 'access' to the most varied set of European countries. Moreover German is the language with most native speakers within the European Economic Area (consisting of the EU and its European trading partners). Dutch earns its place because of its proximity to English. It is easy to learn and provides access to the Netherlands, Flanders (Northern Belgium), some islands in the Caribbean and Suriname. Moreover, speaking Dutch facilitates understanding Afrikaans. Finally you need at least one North Germanic language to complete the patchwork. Norwegian (Bokmal) seems the best choice, since its vocabulary is close to Danish and understanding Swedish should also be possible.
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