Fernand de Brinon

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Fernand de Brinon during his show trial.
Fernand de Brinon.

Fernand, Comte de Brinon (26 August 1885 – 15 April 1947) was a French lawyer and journalist. From 1940 he was Ambassador of the French State to the German High Command in Paris, France. In 1942, he was appointed a Secretary of State.

Life

Early life and marriage

Born into a wealthy aristocratic family in the city of Libourne in the Gironde département, Fernand de Brinon studied political science and law at university but subsequently chose to work as a journalist in Paris. After the First World War he advocated a rapprochement with Germany. In the 1920s he had worked on the Journal de Débats through which he had many contacts in Germany. In the name of peace he had conducted a press campaign against the anti-German Raymond Poincaré.[1]

In the early 1930s, de Brinon, who had made a name for himself with his exclusive interview with Adolf Hitler in October 1933 (published in Matin), met Jeanne Louise Rachel ("Lisette") née Franck, the Jewish wife of the banker Claude André Ullmann. There was immediate attraction, and, "driven by passion", she divorced Ullman on 22 November 1933, and married de Brinon.[2], following which she converted to Roman Catholicism. De Brinon's importance was such that after 1940 he was able to obtain a special protection pass for his Jewish-born wife.[3]

It is alleged that de Brinon lived for years on the subsidies of high finance, particularly of the Jewish banks of Lazard and Rothschild, Lazards being especially interested in the financial newspaper L'Information, for which de Brinon became a leading reporter, with significant political contacts.[4]

1930s

Pierre Laval and Fernand de Brinon during WWII.
De Brinon (centre, in an ambassador's uniform & white coat) being shown the mass graves at Katyn.
Fernand de Brinon, General Otto von Stülpnagel with French General Eugène Bridoux, and on the right, with Colonel Speidel, at the time of General Huntziger's death. Paris, November 1941.

The Brinons were leading socialites in 1930s Paris, and close friends of the political right-wing elites, but also of socialist leader Édouard Daladier (French Premier in 1933).[5] Their active social life surrounded them with artists and other personalities from the Left, such as Léon Blum, and from the Right, such as Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. De Brinon had for many years advocated a direct understanding between France and Germany, had stood for Four-Power politics, and for the extension of the whole of Central and Eastern Europe of a German 'sphere of influence'.[6] In co-ordination with Joachim von Ribbentrop's personal representative in Paris, Otto Abetz[7], de Brinon founded, in November 1933, and headed the France–Germany Committee (the Comité France-Allemagne)[8]which was designed to influence France's political and cultural establishments in a pro-German direction[9] which counted among its members and supporters a substantial number of intellectuals and politicians and which was very active in the years 1934-9. In November 1933 de Brinon published in the Matin newspaper a sensational interview he had with Hitler, which he saw as a preliminary to a possible Franco-German rapprochement.[10] Friendship trips to Germany were organized.[11] During the Munich Agreement, de Brinon sent accounts of the discussions of the French Cabinet, which were obtained from two ministers, to the German government.[12] Between 1935 and 1937 de Brinon met with Hitler five times, each time, he claimed, with the full approval of the French Government, and as an unofficial contact man between them. He also contributed to the leading Paris financial paper, the Information.[13] Shortly after Munich the Comte de Brinon wrote a sensational article demonstrating the virtues of self-determination which, he said, had now been accepted as an 'unchallengable principle'.[14] The receptions organized by the Comité France-Allegmagne were among the most sumptuous in Paris.[15]

Following the German take-over of the rump Czech State as a Protectorate in March 1939, de Brinon was publicly denounced at the Chamber of Deputies by Henri de Kerillis, Jean Ybarnegaray and Louis Marin as a 'German spy'. When war broke out on September 3rd de Brinon discreetly retired to his chateau in the Basses-Pyrénées.[16]

French State

Following France's defeat by Germany in the Second World War, in July 1940 de Brinon was sent for by Pierre Laval, Vice-Premier of the French State, to act as its representative (later Ambassador) to the German High Command in occupied Paris. De Brinon's headquarters was the Hôtel de Breteuil (12 Avenue Foch). He benefited from his long acquaintance with the new German Ambassador, Otto Abetz. In September 1940 he also established an association to help develop closer cultural ties between Germany and France.[17] He was said to be a "moving spirit" for the Anti-Bolshevik LVF, with Pétain's blessing.[18]

De Brinon was invited by the German supreme general staff to the Eastern Front, as President of the committee of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF), to visit the exhumation of the bodies of the Polish victims in the Katyn forest in April 1943.[19]

In 1943, de Brinon had supported Pierre Laval's refusal to send 500,000 French workers to Germany; although afterwards retracted saying 'some' should go. On May 11 of that year de Brinon wrote to Goebbels about Pétain's 'National Revolution' and added that Laval "was constantly protecting the Freemasons, whom the Marshal hated".[20]

Death

Murder

Under the illegal ordonnance of 18 November 1944, by the Allied-installed Provisional French Government, for the purpose of "trying persons who had participated directly in the activities of the French State", the High Court was opened. The three magistrates and juries were chosen of blatantly anti-Petainists and members of the so-called 'resistance'.[21] It goes without saying that the outcomes of these show trials were foregone conclusions.

De Brinon was eventually arrested by the advancing Allied troops. He and his wife were both held in Fresnes prison, but she was eventually released. He was tried during the épuration légale (legal purge) by the court, found guilty and sentenced to death on 6 March 1947.[22] He was executed by firing squad on 15 April at the military fort in the Paris suburb of Montrouge.[22]

Family

His wife Lisette Marquise de Brinon (b. 1896 as Born Jeanne Louise Rachel Franck), who had been declared an "honorary Aryan" by the Germans and was imprisoned briefly after WWII, died on 26 March 1982 in a retirement home in Montmorency, near Paris.

References

  1. ↑ Werth, Alexander, France 1940-1955, Robert Hale, London, p.127.
  2. ↑ https://www.memoiresdeguerre.com/article-brinon-lisette-de-73972368.html
  3. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.127.
  4. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.127.
  5. ↑ Adamthwaite, Anthony, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914-1940, Arnold pubs., London, 1995, p.166.
  6. ↑ Werth, 1942/1966, p.204.
  7. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.127.
  8. ↑ Werth, Alexander, The Twilight of France 1933-1940, New York, 1966 reprint of 1942 edition, p.166.
  9. ↑ Adamthwaite, pp: 165-166.
  10. ↑ Werth, 1942/1966, p.166.
  11. ↑ Werth, 1957, pps:34 & 128.
  12. ↑ Adamthwaite, p.166.
  13. ↑ Werth, 1942/1966, p.204.
  14. ↑ Werth, 1942/1966, p.204.
  15. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.128-9.
  16. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.128-9.
  17. ↑ Littlejohn, David, The Patriotic Traitors, Heinemann, London, 1972, p.222
  18. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.129.
  19. ↑ 1943 Visite de Monsieur de Brinon aux combattants de la L.V. F..Template:Cbignore
  20. ↑ Werth, 1957, p.115.
  21. ↑ Werth. 1957,. p.259n.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Shirer, William L. (1971). The Collapse of the Third Republic, 3rd, New York: Pocket Books, 374. ISBN 0671785095. 
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