page_title: Louis Renault (industrialist)
section_title: World War I, interwar period and developments
hierarchical_section_title: Louis Renault (industrialist) / World War I, interwar period and developments
caption_attribution_description: English: Share of the SA des Usines Renault, issued 1. January 1932 Deutsch: Aktie über 500 Francs der SA des Usines Renault vom 1. Januar 1932, ausgestellt auf Louis Renault
context_page_description: Louis Renault was a French industrialist, one of the founders of Renault and a pioneer of the automobile industry.
  Renault built one of France's largest automobile manufacturing concerns, which bears his name to this day. During World War I his factories contributed massively to the war effort notably so by the creation and manufacture of the first tank of modern configuration: the Renault FT tank.
  Accused of collaborating with the Germans during World War II, he died while awaiting trial in liberated France toward the end of 1944 under uncertain circumstances. His company was seized and nationalized by the provisional government of France although he died before he could be tried. His factories were the only ones permanently expropriated by the French government.
  In 1956, Time Magazine described Renault as "rich, powerful and famous, cantankerous, brilliant, often brutal, the little Napoleon of an automaking empire — vulgar, loud, domineering, impatient, he was a terror to associates, a friend to practically none," adding that to the French working man, Renault became known as "the ogre of Billancourt."
context_section_description: At the start of the First World War, in August 1914, in response to the then acute shortage of artillery ammunition Renault suggested that car factories such as Renault could manufacture 75mm shells using hydraulic presses rather than with the usual longer and costlier lathe operations. Identical methods were also used by Andre Citroen in his own factory. The resulting shells helped overcome the shortages, but as they had to be manufactured in two pieces they were inherently weak at the base thus sometimes letting hot gases detonate the melinite inside the shell. Over 600 French 75mm guns were destroyed by premature explosions in 1915, and their crews killed or injured.
  Louis Renault was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur after the war for the major contribution of his factories to the war effort. His factories' mass production in 1918 of the revolutionary and highly effective Renault FT tank, which he had personally designed with Rodolphe Ernst-Metzmaier, was perhaps Renault's most significant contribution during that period.
  During the interwar period his right-wing opinions became well known, leading to various cases of labour unrest with proletarian avant-garde workers at the Boulogne Billancourt plant. He pleaded for a necessary union between European nations.
  Louis Renault competed fiercely with André Citroën, whom he called "le petit Juif" ("the little Jew"), growing increasingly paranoid and reclusive at the same time, and deeply concerned about the rising power of Communism and labor unions, eventually retreating to his country estate, a castle on the river Seine near Rouen.
  Renault remained in complete control of his company until 1942, dealing with its rapid expansion while designing several new inventions, most of which are still in use today, such as hydraulic shock absorbers, the modern drum brake and compressed gas ignition.
caption: Share of the SA des Usines Renault, issued 1. January 1932 to Louis Renault
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