Germany declares war on France, August 3, 1914 On the afternoon of August 3, 1914, two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declares war on France, advancing with a long-standing strategy, conceived by the former Chief of Staff of the German Army, Alfred von Schlieffen, for a two-front war against France and Russia. Hours later, France makes its own declaration of war against Germany, preparing its troops to move to the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which they had handed over to Germany in the settlement that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. With Germany officially at war with France and Russia, a conflict originally centered in the tumultuous region of the Balkans, in the wake of the assassination of Austrian archbishop Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and the subsequent confrontation between Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Russia, Serbia's powerful Slavic supporter, had erupted in a large-scale war. Also on August 3,...