Fernand de Brinon, Marquis de Brinon (; 26 August 1885 – 15 April 1947) was a French lawyer and journalist who was one of the architects of French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. He claimed to have had five private talks with Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1937. Brinon was a high official of the collaborationist Vichy regime. During the liberation of France in 1944, remnants of the Vichy leadership fled into exile, where Brinon was selected as president of the rump government in exile. After the war was over, he was tried in France for war crimes, found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed. Early life and marriage Born into a wealthy family in the city of Libourne in the Gironde département, Fernand de Brinon studied political science and law at university but chose to work as a journalist in Paris. After the First World War, he advocated a rapprochement with Germany. He became friends with Joachim von Ribbentrop. De Brinon married Jeanne Louise Rachel Franck, the Jewish former wife of Claude Ullmann; she converted to Roman Catholicism. 1930s Paris The Brinons became leading socialites in 1930s Paris, and close friends of the political right-wing elite and of radical leader Édouard Daladier. In co-ordination with Ribbentrop's personal representative in Paris, Otto Abetz, Brinon headed the France–Germany Committee, which was designed to influence France's political and cultural establishment in a pro-German direction. This was Nazi Germany's main propaganda technique in their attempt to influence French politics before the Second World War. During the Munich crisis, Brinon sent accounts of the discussions of the French Cabinet to the German government, obtained from two ministers. Occupied Paris A leading advocate for collaboration following France's defeat by Germany in the Second World War, in July 1940 Brinon was invited by Pierre Laval, Vice-Premier of the new Vichy regime, to act as its representative to the German High Command in occupied Paris. Brinon's seat was the confiscated Hôtel de Breteuil in Paris (12 avenue Foch). Brinon benefited from his long acquaintance with the German ambassador Otto Abetz. In September 1940 he also established the Groupe Collaboration to help establish closer cultural ties between Germany and France. In 1942, Philippe Pétain, head of the Vichy regime, gave him the title of Secretary of State. As the third-ranking member of the Vichy regime and because of his enthusiastic support for the fascist cause,