For more than half a century, France has been unable to decide whether the man who built the RENAULT car company from scratch was a heroic businessman or a Nazi collaborator.
We know Renault today as one of the leading companies in the automotive field, and there is no doubt about that. However, if we focus on the person who founded it, Louis Renault, we will discover that it is one of the most controversial figures in history. The arguments are not only moral. They are related to the behavior of the French state itself, which led Louis Renault to prison and, as his descendants complain, to death. And he nationalized the company, appropriating huge profits with little compensation for his family. So, large sums of money are involved, so whether Louis Renault’s reputation is “restored” or not is a very difficult and time-consuming process.
CREATION OF RENAULT BRAKES
Louis was the fourth of six children of the bourgeois Renault family, born in 1877 and raised in Paris. His family was able to provide him with a high education at the famous Lycée Condorcet, but he showed a special interest in engineering from an early age. He spent every morning at a steam engine repair shop near his home and had turned the basement into a makeshift machine shop, where he would take any broken parts he could get his hands on.
At the age of just 21, in 1898, Renault built his first car, which he affectionately called Voiturette, meaning… small car. In it he managed to incorporate new things, such as a three-speed gearbox for the first time, but also… reverse gear (which was first applied to Mercedes cars in 1904). This car appeared for the first time in a speed competition on Christmas Eve 1898 and won first place. That day Renault received 13 orders for such cars and decided that he would build his own company.
He enlisted the help of his two older brothers, Marcel and Fernand, who had experience in business, having already worked in their father’s spinning mill. Together they formed Renault Frères (Renault Brothers) in 1899, Louis devoting himself to the development of models and the brothers becoming the best managers. However, within the next decade, he was left alone. Marcel suffered a tragic death in 1903 in an accident at the Paris-Madrid rally and Fernand, fell ill and died in 1909. He gradually retired from engineering and took over the management of the company.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Renault devoted its factory to the production not only of cars but also of ammunition for the French army (as did its major competitor, Citroen). The 75 mm shells produced had problems and production was halted, but Renault gave France a decisive boost with the production of the FT, a small and versatile tank that in difficult conditions greatly helped the French advance. The tank was designed by Renault himself, for which he was awarded the Legion of Honor after the end of the war.
A COMPLETELY CONTRADICTIVE PROFILE
During the interwar period, Renault appeared particularly progressive in his new ideas for his cars, and some of the inventions incorporated in them are still in circulation today, such as hydraulic shock absorbers, the boiler and compressed gas ignition. On the other hand, however, the way he managed his large business was increasingly authoritarian. He was a staunch anti-communist, stubbornly refused to negotiate with unions for the rights of his workers and often made anti-Semitic statements. The French communists listed him among their greatest enemies and called him the “dragon of Bilancourt”.
Renault visited Germany in 1938 and had a one-on-one meeting with Adolf Hitler. However, by the start of World War II he had become the main supplier of cars to the French army and Germany’s war against France found him in the US as the French government’s emissary to negotiate the purchase of tanks. Up to that point his patriotism is unquestionable. Things started to go wrong soon after the Germans occupied all of northern France. Renault’s factories were placed under German military command and it is estimated that from 1940 to 1944 its factories produced 34,232 vehicles for use by the Wehrmacht.
Was this decision deliberate or forced? Here lies the controversy. The French Resistance, as well as American publications such as Life, called it the “Paris file”. He said that even if he refused, the Germans had decided to confiscate all the machinery in his factories and transport it to Germany along with the workers, who would work in slave conditions. So, with his decision to allow the factories to operate in France, he saved thousands of lives. In fact, he is credited with a characteristic phrase: “Better to give them the butter than to take away the cow”. He also said in his defense that the factories had deliberately slowed down the production rate so as not to build too many vehicles and some of them presented a problem in the invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa) due to deliberate mistakes. The factory workers, of course, had a different opinion, saying that the initiative for low production and sabotage had been theirs, while Renault pressured them to work 100% by threatening to transfer them to Germany.
From 1942, his health began to deteriorate. The main factory in the Bilancourt area was among the first targets of British bombers and was almost completely destroyed. In 1944, when France was liberated, there was a mobilization to arrest Renault for collaborating with the occupier. He himself received proposals to leave the country, but said that he had nothing to fear, since he had done his duty and surrendered on condition that he would not be imprisoned until his trial. The main charge he faced was that he accepted large sums (up to 120 million dollars) for the cars he built, a sign that his company was not dictated to by the Germans. The case never reached court. Renault, despite the agreement, was locked up in Fresno prison, despite his poor health. He died there, on October 24, 1944. The conditions of detention and the cause of death are another matter. There were eyewitnesses, mainly from his surroundings, who swear that he was brutally beaten by guards during his detention.
The official cause of death was “uremia,” without a doctor’s signature and certainly no autopsy or forensic expertise. A week before his death, the French provisional government announced the nationalization of Renault. The main reason was that “the factory had to be up and running quickly,” but there was no compensation for his family. De Gaulle’s government created a new company, (RNUR, Régie Nationale des Usines Renault), and Renault was found guilty posthumously of “enrichment obtained by collaboration with the enemy.” Renault’s family, mainly his widow Christian and his son Jean-Louis, never stopped shouting about Louis’ innocence. If, of course, the French state were to restore its reputation, it would have to pay them huge compensation for lost profits, as the new Renault company remained entirely state-owned for the next half century and made huge profits. The family received a small compensation in 1967, not even 1% of what it claimed.
After 2000, voices from various circles began to grow regarding the “wrong activation of the charges” against Renault, as formulated by the French state. The case has not progressed in the courts, but it seems that things are also changing in French public opinion. Renault is no longer seen by everyone as a collaborator with the Nazis, but as a man forced by circumstances to leave his factories open and a victim of state profiteering.
