massacre at 1972 Munich Olympic Games

Only a few decades after the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games debacle and the WW2 Holocaust ending in 1945, West Germans hoped they’d rehabilit­ate their reputation with splendid Olympic Games in Munich 1972. Not­hing would symbol­ise the new Germany more than the particip­ation of a keen Isr­aeli team and a light blue Olympic em­blem that embod­ied fresh­­ness. Even the friendly safety guards at the 1972 Games were largely unarmed.

Victims' names and their sports, Flickr

Top: Amitzur Shapira, David Berger, Eliezer Halfin, Josef Romano, Kehat Shorr.

Bottom: Moshe Weinberg, Mark Slavin, Jacob Springer, Josef Gutfreund, Andre Spitzer. 

Absent Ze'ev Friedman. 

The German authorities were aware of security threats, noting the Red Army Fact­ion, And­reas Baader, Ulrike Mein­hof's leftist group and the far-right Nat­ional Demo­cratic Party of Germany. Nonetheless they believed a killer Palestinian group was improb­ab­le.

Black September originat­ed in the long 1948 Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Jordan-Palest­in­ian Lib­eration Organ­isation/PLO con­f­lict. The post-war UN partition plan of Palestine envisaged both an Arab and a Jewish state, but after the 19­48 Arab-Israeli War, only Is­rael exist­ed with many Palestinians dis­pl­aced. From 1964, P.L.0’s goal was self-determination for Palestine, especially after the 1967 war, in what the Palest­in­ians called The Cat­astrophe.

Jordan’s King Huss­ein ruled more Palestinian refugees than Jordanians and he feared the PLO. His army killed thousands of Palest­in­ians in Sept 1970. Black September, an affiliated extremist wing of the PLO, was formed in 1971 to av­enge the sl­aughter, assassinating the Jord­anian Prime Min­ister. Japanese terrorists rec­ruited by a Pal­est­in­ian group mass­acred 26 at Israel's Airport May 1972. But killing young, world athletes in a distant country would be a new obscenity.

The Munich Games in Sept continued for 10 days without incid­ent, and security officials relaxed. But on Sept 4, while the Israelis enjoyed their Vil­lage flat, some Palestinians planned an operation under Palestinian Commander Issa. At 4am partying at­hletes help­ed the track-suited fed­ay­een over the Vil­lage fence, car­ry­ing Kal­ash­nik­ovs and gren­ades in duf­fel bags. These Black Sept­em­berniks were linked to the PLO. 

Black September terrorists on the balcony

outside the Israeli athletes' flat

Olympic Village Munich

As West German authorities scrambled to respond, the Gam­es continued normally; it was 7 hours into the sit­uat­ion bef­ore anyone saw the cr­isis. This became the first time terrorism had rea­ched a live global audience. Despite the Israeli wr­estling judge blocking them, the ter­ror­ists pushed in. Two men escaped out the back window, but 11 other team­mates were shackled. Josef Romano and Moshe Wein­berg were killed grabbing the ter­ror­ists’ guns.

When the Olympic Village woke, officials locked the gates and flats. At 7am, papers signed by Black September fl­oated from a window detailing the terrorists’ demand: release of 234 terrorist prisoners in Israel and 2 in West Germ­any, or an Isr­aeli hostage would be exec­ut­ed every hour. The freed terrorists would be taken to an Arab count­ry.

As German officers negotiated, Israeli P.M Golda Meir trusted West German officials to protect her athletes on German soil. Alas their re­scue attempts failed eg German pol­ice officers went onto nearby roof­­tops. But as the world watched on live TV, so did the terr­orists inside the flat. As the Ger­mans stalled, Issa grew impatient, threatening to kill all the athletes. A truce was reach­ed: the terr­orists and hostages would be flown to Für­sten­feld­bruck mil­itary airfield Munich where a Boeing 727 would fly to Cairo.

That night the 8 terrorists and the surviving hostages arrived at the airport. Is­sa inspect the Boeing and found an empty plane waiting. 13 German police officers dressed as flight crew for a plan­ned amb­ush i.e to kill the hostage-takers as they emerged from the heli­c­opters to board the plane. But the police had no trained snipers, little equ­ip­ment and no data on how many Black September memb­ers were there.

As Is­sa and his mate returned from the deserted plane, police sharp shooters fired from a rooftop. The scene descended into chaotic cross­fire and the airfield pl­unged into blackness. The West Germans shot  5 of the 8 terrorists, but not before the terrorists mass­ac­red all of the rem­ain­ing Israeli hostages, and a West Ger­man police­man. Three of the Black September members escaped and were soon capt­ur­ed. Only at 3am did the ABC announce to world audiences that the athletes had all been killed. The well-intended German rescue attempt was a tragic failure. 

The flag was flown at half mast

to honour the murdered athletes

at Munich's main stadium, NPR

The Olympic Games had been suspended for 34 hours, with a mem­orial for the Israelis held in the main stadium the next morning. But Pres. Avery Brundage (International Olympic Committee) declared that the Games must go on. Only Israeli sur­­vivors and coffins flew home. 

The nation stood in silence

when the Israeli athletes' coffins arrived at Lod Airport, 

Sept 7, 1972. Origins

Global coverage sh­ock­ed the world, affecting pub­lic opinion on non-state violence as a pol­it­ical tool. Germans had tried to save the athl­etes, but were seen as unprepared because sec­urity was in the hands of State (not Fed­eral) authorities i.e people without expertise in hostage situations. And West Ger­many's post-war const­itution limited the dom­estic use of the army in peacetime. Meanwhile some Germ­ans blamed the Israelis for ignoring the terror­ists’ de­m­ands.

Many Palestinians saw the terrorist attack as bringing welcome, world­wide attention to their struggle, despite denunciations for the terr­orists’ methods. But the Munich massacre in Sept 1972 had lasting rep­er­cussions on an international scale, waking up Western govern­ments to the threat of terrorism, showing the power of live broad­cast and set­t­ing the stage for future violence.

Later tensions worsened when Black September sympath­isers hijacked a Lufthansa flight in Oct 1972, dem­an­ding that the 3 Black September members in West German det­ention be freed. The West Germans complied! The 3 surviving Munich killers arr­iv­ed as her­oes in Libya, saved by Moammar Gadd­afi. Golda Meir and all the Jews were devastated. Spouse and I had already left Central Europe and were safely in London, but we never fully recovered.

The development of counterterrorism forces grew so that new special forces could respond to hostage sit­uations and te­rrorism eg in Entebbe (1976) and Somalia (1977). Now read One Day in September by Simon Reeve (2005) and Munich 1972: Tragedy, Terror and Triumph by David Large (2012) .