The Glenn Miller Conspiracy: The Never-Before-Told Story of His Life -- and Death
Journalist and WWII-veteran Downs has spent the last 50 years investigating the mysterious circumstances of the disappearance of big band leader Glenn Miller as his plane flew over the English Channel in 1944. Downss intriguing if far-fetched look at Millers final days presents a radical argument: Miller, an army major, was a U.S. spy who died while attempting to deliver a secret message from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who was requesting a group of German generals to join a top-secret operation to disrupt Hitlers war plans. Using his access to secret documents before and after the war ended, Downs makes a strong argument that Miller was captured in France by Nazi spies and tortured and killed during an unsuccessful interrogation in Paris to get him to reveal information about the operation. Downs interviews a number of U.S. troops who saw Millers dead body dumped outside a Parisian brothel, and he argues that the U.S. Army High Command created the fake story of Millers disappearance to keep the Nazis from claiming that they had broken Millers spirit. While Downss research has some merit, his breathlessly written suppositions sometimes read like the worst JFK assassination books.(Jan.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.