Military service
As France fell in 1940, Doriot approached the French embassy in Washington about supporting the war effort. He was offered a position as a limousine driver to the ambassador and walked out. His expertise in manufacturing had attracted the attention of American military leaders. William J. Donovan arranged a meeting with President Roosevelt, who appealed for Doriot's help improving military readiness despite his French citizenship. Doriot became a naturalized U.S. citizen in January 1940.
In the spring of 1941, his former student Edmund B. Gregory, the newly appointed Quartermaster General, recruited him into the Quartermaster Corps as a lieutenant colonel in charge of expediting procurement. Doriot's first task was persuading Detroit automakers to retool factories for Army trucks. When Japan captured Malaya's natural rubber supply in late 1941, he turned to the rubber crisis: his February 1942 memorandum outlined what became the U.S. rubber rationing program and initiated a federal program for synthetic alternatives that Roosevelt announced publicly. The synthetic rubber industry that grew from these wartime investments now accounts for the majority of American rubber production.
In July 1942, the Quartermaster Corps created a Military Planning Division and placed Doriot over its research functions. His programs concentrated on improving conditions for ordinary soldiers: water-repellent fabrics, durable boots, insulated fatigues, and insecticides were among the innovations his teams developed or contracted. In October 1943, he was made director of the full Planning Division, a contracting organization that grew from 500 to 2,000 civilians and handled several billion dollars in procurement research, covering everything from trucks and uniforms to the Army's letter-graded field rations.
One program bore Doriot's name directly. In 1943, responding to wartime metal shortages, his division initiated development of plastic-laminated body armor. Dow Chemical manufactured plates of fiberglass and resin, which Doriot's researchers named "Doron" in his honour. The armor debuted at the Battle of Okinawa and was later adapted for pilots' flak jackets in the Korean War.
Doriot was promoted to brigadier general in February 1945, a rare distinction in the Quartermaster Corps. He was discharged in May 1946 and received the Distinguished Service Medal, followed later by appointment as a Commander of the British Empire and the French Legion of Honor.
During the Army's post-war reorganization, Doriot proposed consolidating the Quartermaster General's scattered research programs at a single facility in the Boston area. After several years of bureaucratic negotiation, the Quartermaster Research and Development Center was established in Natick, Massachusetts. The facility's Doriot Climatic Chambers, used for testing soldiers and equipment at environmental extremes, were named in his honour in 1994.
