Louis Renault (pronounced "lwi reh-NOH") was born on February 12, 1877, and died on October 24, 1944. He was a French business leader, one of the people who started the Renault company, and helped begin the car industry.
Renault created one of France’s largest car-making companies, which still uses his name. During World War I, his factories helped the war effort greatly, including by designing and building the first modern tank, the Renault FT tank.
Louis Renault was charged with working with Germany during World War II. He died in 1944 while waiting for a trial in France, but the reasons for his death were not clear. His company was taken over and made government-owned by the temporary French government, though he never had a trial. His factories were the only ones permanently taken by the French government.
In 1956, Time magazine described Renault as "rich, powerful, and famous, but difficult to work with, smart, and sometimes harsh. He was known as 'the little Napoleon of an automaking empire' and called 'the ogre of Billancourt' by French workers."
Early life and career
Louis Renault was the fourth of six children born to Alfred and Berthe Renault, a middle-class family in Paris. He studied at Lycée Condorcet and was interested in engineering and mechanics from a young age. He often visited the Serpollet steam car workshop or worked on old Panhard engines in the tool shed at his family’s home in Billancourt.
In 1898, he built his first car by hiring workers to modify a used 3⁄4 hp (560 W) De Dion-Bouton cycle. His car had a special type of driveshaft and a gear system that could go forward and reverse with three speeds, one of which was direct drive. He patented this design the following year and named his car the Voiturette. On December 24, 1898, he won a bet with friends by proving his car’s innovative driveshaft could climb the slope of Rue Lepic in Montmartre faster than a car with a bicycle-like chain drive. He also received 13 orders for the vehicle.
Seeing the business potential, Louis partnered with his older brothers, Marcel and Fernand, who had experience working in their father’s button and textile company. Together, they formed Renault Frères on February 25, 1899. Marcel and Fernand managed business operations, while Louis focused on design and manufacturing. Marcel died in the 1903 Paris-Madrid motor race, and in 1908, Louis took full control of the company after Fernand retired for health reasons. Fernand passed away in 1909.
On September 26, 1918, Louis married Christiane Boullaire, the 21-year-old sister of French painter Jacques Boullaire. They had a son named Jean-Louis, born in 1920. They lived in Paris at 90 Avenue Foch and owned a country estate near Saint-Pierre-du-Vauvray, Rouen, called Chateau de la Batellerie à Herqueville or simply Chateau Herqueville. The chateau had a view of more than 3 km of the Seine, and the entire property covered 4,000 hectares. At Louis’s request, the small town hall of Herqueville was moved, and his employees entered the residence through a tunnel.
Chateau Herqueville is located at 49°14′31.66″N 1°15′24.55″E (49.2421278°N 1.2568194°E).
World War I, interwar period and developments
At the beginning of World War I, in August 1914, Renault proposed that car factories, like his own, could make 75 mm shells using hydraulic presses instead of the usual, more expensive lathe methods. Andre Citroën used the same method in his factory. These shells helped solve the shortage of ammunition, but because they were made in two pieces, they were weak at the base. This weakness sometimes caused hot gases to explode the melinite inside the shells. Over 600 French 75 mm guns were destroyed by early explosions in 1915, and many soldiers were killed or injured.
After the war, Louis Renault was honored with the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur for his factories' major help during the war. In 1918, his factories produced the Renault FT tank, a new and highly effective design he created with Rodolphe Ernst-Metzmaier. This invention was likely his most important contribution during the war.
During the time between the world wars, Renault's right-wing views became widely known. This led to labor disputes at his Boulogne Billancourt plant with workers who supported progressive ideas. He argued for stronger unity among European nations.
Louis Renault had a strong rivalry with Citroën, whom he called "le petit Juif" ("the little Jew"). He became more suspicious and isolated over time, worried about the growing influence of Communism and labor unions. Eventually, he moved to his countryside home, a castle near the Seine River in Rouen.
Renault remained in full control of his company until 1942. During this time, he managed its fast growth and created several new inventions, many of which are still used today, such as hydraulic shock absorbers, modern drum brakes, and compressed gas ignition systems.
World War II, arrest and death
In 1938, Renault visited Adolf Hitler. By 1939, he became an important supplier for the French army. When Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded France in 1940, Renault was in the United States, sent by his government to request tanks. He returned to find the Franco-German armistice in place. Renault faced a choice: cooperate with the Germans to prevent his factories and equipment from being moved to Germany, which could lead to accusations of working with the enemy. Instead, he placed his factories at the service of Vichy France, which made him appear to be helping the Nazis. Over four years, Renault produced 34,232 vehicles for the Germans. He claimed that continuing operations saved thousands of workers from being sent to Germany, but in 1942, Life magazine called him a "notorious Paris collaborationist."
During the German occupation of France, the company was controlled by the Germans, with officials from Daimler-Benz in key roles. Renault became unpopular among members of the French resistance. The Renault factories on Île Seguin in Billancourt became major targets for the Royal Air Force (RAF). On March 3, 1942, the factories were severely damaged. Renault’s health worsened, including serious kidney problems. In late 1942, he developed aphasia, which made him unable to speak or write.
Three weeks after France was liberated in 1944, Renault surrendered under the condition that he would not be jailed until formally indicted. He was arrested outside Paris on September 22, 1944, on charges of industrial collaboration with Nazi Germany. At the time of his arrest, Renault denied that his company received $120,000,000 from the Germans for war materials. He claimed he kept his heavily damaged factory operating at Vichy’s request to protect its materials and equipment from the Nazis and to save workers from deportation. He was imprisoned in Fresnes Prison in Paris, where he was already seriously ill. Records of his time in Fresnes were later missing. On October 5, 1944, he was moved to a psychiatric hospital in Ville-Evrard, Neuilly-sur-Marne.
Renault’s health worsened quickly on October 9, 1944, and he was moved to a private nursing home at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu clinic in Paris at his family’s request, after falling into a coma. He died on October 24, 1944, four weeks after his arrest, still awaiting trial. He claimed he was mistreated in Fresnes Prison. His 1918 French Legion of Honor, awarded for his contributions to the Allied victory in World War I, was revoked by the Vichy regime.
No autopsy was performed, and the exact cause of Renault’s death remains unknown. At the time, officials listed uremia as the cause of death. In 1956, his wife claimed he died from beatings and torture by prison guards.
Louis Renault is buried at his family home, Chateau Herqueville, in Herqueville, Eure.
Expropriation
In October 1944, the temporary French government took control of Louis Renault's company. The Minister of Information, Henri Teitgen, stated at the time that this was not a taking of property, but "just a step to help French factories restart production." Later, a group would review financial records, take away profits from wartime activities, and file charges.
On January 1, 1945, four months after Louis Renault's death, an order from General Charles de Gaulle's temporary government officially ended the Société Anonyme des Usines Renault and made it government-owned, giving it the new name Régie Nationale des Usines Renault (RNUR).
As a result, the company Louis Renault had founded was taken over by the government under the official reason of collaboration. Renault was charged after his death with "unlawful gains from working with the enemy."
Aftermath and controversy
In 1944, after his company was taken over by the government and he died, Louis Renault’s will was opened. It showed he had left his company to his 40,000 employees. At the time the company was nationalized, his wife, Christiane, and her son, Jean-Louis, owned 95% of the company stock and received nothing. Other stockholders were compensated. By 1956, Renault had become France’s largest nationalized company, employing 51,000 people, producing 200,000 cars yearly, and earning $11 million in profit each year.
The director of the factory during the war received a legal decision in 1949 stating that he and the factory had not worked with the enemy.
In 1956, Christiane Renault claimed her husband, Louis Renault, had been murdered. She sought to prove he was among the more than 9,000 French citizens listed by the government as killed in post-war revenge attacks. His body was later exhumed for an autopsy. She provided evidence, including a report showing his urea levels were normal a week before his death and an X-ray showing a broken vertebra.
In 2005, the London Daily Telegraph reported that eyewitnesses and family members said Louis Renault, a 67-year-old man who was once thin, had been tortured and beaten. A nun at Fresnes said she saw him collapse after being struck on the head by a jailer using a helmet. An X-ray arranged by his family showed a broken neck vertebra.
The same 2005 report stated that Renault believed his duty was to protect France’s manufacturing industry. German military and Daimler-Benz officials had visited his Billancourt factory to assess it for removal to Germany, along with its workers. Renault avoided this by agreeing to produce vehicles for the German army. According to Anthony Rhodes’s biography of Renault, he once said, “It is better to give them the butter, or they’ll take the cows.” The report added that Renault’s efforts to save his company from being taken over by Daimler-Benz meant his factories and workers would not have been sent to Germany.
Later studies showed that while Renault had worked with the enemy, he also separated strategic materials and sabotaged trucks. For example, dipsticks were marked to show low fuel levels, and engines were dried and became stuck during use, which was observed on the Russian Front. Claims that Renault’s management slowed production for the Germans were countered by arguing that workers, not managers, caused the slowdowns. A 2005 article in The Daily Telegraph suggested that legally, it could be argued the Renault company, considered a key part of France’s industry, was taken by force, and admitting Renault and his company had been unfairly treated might lead to large compensation payments.
In 2011, Patrick Fridenson, a business history professor in Paris, said it was hard to determine how much Renault should be considered a collaborator, as he risked losing everything if he resisted the Germans. Monika Ostler Riess, a scholar who studied French and German sources, found no evidence that Renault collaborated more than others. She said he tried to save what he had built, and the alternative to working with the enemy was losing his company to the Germans.
Robert Paxton, in his 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, suggested that if Renault had lived longer, the Renault factory might have been returned to him and his family. The Berliet truck factory in Lyon stayed in the Berliet family’s possession despite producing 2,330 trucks for the Germans. Marius Berliet, who died in 1949, refused to accept legal actions against him after the war.
On July 29, 1967, Louis-Jean Renault, the only heir, received small compensation for personal, non-industrial losses. In 1982, representatives of the Organisation civile et militaire and Robert de Longcamps worked to clear Renault’s name, claiming he had been wrongly accused of helping the enemy. Their requests to Robert Badinter, the French Minister of Justice, were ignored.
Renault’s factories were the only ones permanently taken over by the French government. As of 2005, Renault officials avoided mentioning Louis Renault. For the 1999 centennial celebration of the original Renault Frères company, the company ignored the grandchildren of Louis Renault.
Despite the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which requires fair compensation before taking property, Louis Renault and his heirs were never officially compensated for their company. Renault returned to private ownership in 1996 when the French government sold 80% of the company.
In 2011, Renault’s heirs again tried to restore his reputation and seek compensation, claiming the government had illegally taken over his company.