Louis Renault (industrialist) - World War II, Arrest and Death

World War II, Arrest and Death

In 1938, Renault visited Adolf Hitler, and by 1939 he had become an important supplier for the French army. At the time Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded France in 1940, Louis Renault was in the U.S., sent by his government to ask for tanks. He returned to find the Franco-German armistice in place. Renault was faced with the choice of cooperating with the Germans and possibly forestalling them from moving his factory and equipment to Germany, which would lead to an accusation of collaboration with the enemy. He did, in fact, put his factories at the service of Vichy France, which meant that he was also assisting the Nazis. Over a period of four years, Renault manufactured 34,232 vehicles for the Germans. Renault argued that "by continuing operations he had saved thousands of workers from being transported to Germany."

During the Nazi occupation of France, the company was under the control of the Germans, with people from Daimler-Benz in key positions. Renault himself became unpopular among members of the French resistance. The Renault factories on Île Seguin in Billancourt had become top priority targets for the British bombers of the Royal Air Force and were ultimately severely damaged in March 1942. Renault's health issues worsened, including his severely diminished renal function, and in late 1942, he suffered aphasia, and was unable to speak or write.

Three weeks after France was liberated in 1944, Renault surrendered "on condition that he would not be jailed until 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 firm had received $120,000,000 from the Germans for war materials, said that he had kept his huge, much-bombed plant going at the request of Vichy to keep its materials and equipment out of Nazi hands and to save workers from deportation." He was incarcerated in Paris' Fresnes Prison being already seriously ill at the time. The records for the exact period of his incarceration at Fresnes would later turn out to be missing. Renault was moved on October 5 to a psychiatric hospital at Ville-Evrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne.

When Renault's health quickly declined on October 9, 1944 he was again moved to a private nursing home at the clinic Saint-Jean-de-Dieuhe in the Rue Oudinot, Paris at the request of his family and supporters, having gone into a coma. He died on October 24, 1944, four weeks after his incarceration, still awaiting trial and having claimed to have been mistreated in Fresnes Prison, with his 1918 French Legion of Honor for exceptional contribution to the victory of the First World War, having been expunged by the Vichy régime.

No autopsy was performed and the exact cause of Louis Renault's death remains unclear. An official report at the time gave the cause of death as uremia.

Louis Renault is buried at his country home Chateau Herqueville, in Herqueville dans l'Eure.

See: Louis Renault's burial tomb