Munich Massacre

The 1972 Munich Summer Olympics had been conceived by West Germany as an opportunity to project a new national image less than three decades after the Second World War.[1] Promoted as the "Smiling Games" or the "Games of Peace and Joy," they were intended to demonstrate Germany's democratic transformation.[1] Security reflected this peaceable ambition: the Olympic Village had a fence routinely crossed by athletes, while the Israeli delegation occupied accessible quarters at 31 Connollystrasse.[2][3]

Black September's organizational relationship with Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization is described differently among sources. A U.S. congressional resolution describes it as a terrorist group with ties to the PLO's Fatah movement, while another account calls it a PLO faction.[4][2]

The vulnerability of the Israeli delegation was not entirely unforeseen. Munich police chief Manfred Schreiber had commissioned police psychologist Georg Sieber to prepare twenty-six worst-case scenarios. Sieber's twenty-first scenario anticipated Palestinian commandos entering the Olympic Village, taking Israelis hostage, demanding the release of Arab prisoners, and seeking transport to a friendly Arab capital. Schreiber considered the scenario far-fetched.[5] German authorities had also received warnings about a possible Palestinian terrorist attack before the Games but did not act to secure the Village.[2]

Shortly before dawn on September 5, 1972, five terrorists wearing tracksuits climbed the Olympic Village fence and were joined by three more men.[2] Their entry attracted little suspicion because athletes routinely crossed the fence and the terrorists carried their weapons in athletic bags.[2] Using stolen keys, the group entered two apartments occupied by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystrasse.[2]

Israeli wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund heard the door opening, threw his nearly 300-pound body against it, and shouted "Hevre tistalku!" — Hebrew for "Guys, get out of here!"[2] His action helped several teammates escape or hide. Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg resisted and enabled wrestler Gad Tsobari to escape before being shot and killed. Weightlifter Yossef Romano wounded one attacker before he too was killed.[2]

Nine members of the Israeli delegation were taken hostage. Sources variously report demands for approximately 200 to 236 prisoners, including Palestinians held by Israel, Japanese Red Army terrorist Kozo Okamoto, and West German terrorists Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.[1][5] The terrorists threatened to kill one hostage every hour if their demands were not met.[5] Negotiators reportedly offered an unlimited amount of money for the hostages' release, but the offer was rejected.[1]

The eleven Israelis killed were athletes, coaches, and referees representing several Olympic disciplines.[4] The two murdered during the initial takeover were Moshe Weinberg, the wrestling coach, and Yossef Romano, a weightlifter.[2]

The nine murdered as hostages were Ze'ev Friedman and David Berger, weightlifters; Eliezer Halfin and Mark Slavin, wrestlers; Yossef Gutfreund, wrestling referee; Kehat Shorr, shooting coach; Andre Spitzer, fencing coach; Amitzur Shapira, athletics coach; and Yakov Springer, weightlifting referee.[4] West German police officer Anton Fliegerbauer was also killed during the rescue operation.[4]

Five of the Israeli victims — Spitzer, Shapira, Shorr, Halfin, and Slavin — were buried together at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Berger, a dual American-Israeli citizen, was buried in Cleveland after his body was returned to the United States on an Air Force jet ordered by President Richard Nixon.[6]

The crisis lasted approximately twenty-three hours from the initial breach to its conclusion.[7] German authorities negotiated with the terrorists while television networks broadcast the siege worldwide. A planned rescue inside the Olympic Village was abandoned after television coverage allowed the hostage-takers to observe the preparations.[5]

Television coverage alternated between the hostage crisis and Olympic competitions. Athletic events continued for approximately seven hours after the attack began and were not halted until nearly 4:00 p.m. on September 5.[5]

Contemporaneous U.S. records describe debate over whether Israel and the United States should continue participating in the Games. Secretary of State William Rogers warned that an Israeli withdrawal could constitute a "terrible slap at the Germans," while President Richard Nixon directed that Israel be informed the United States wished to continue.[7] Germany insisted on retaining responsibility for the rescue rather than accepting Israeli intervention.[2] Mossad director Zvi Zamir traveled to Munich, but German authorities rejected his recommendations for freeing the hostages.[2]

After hours of negotiations, the terrorists and their hostages were transported by two helicopters to Fürstenfeldbruck, where they expected to receive an aircraft for a flight to Cairo.[2] German sharpshooters were positioned around the airfield.[3]

The rescue plan suffered from serious failures. German authorities had expected five terrorists but discovered during the transfer that there were eight, leaving too few marksmen assigned to the operation.[2] The U.S. State Department later described the rescue attempt as bungled, while a historical account describes how the planned airfield ambush unraveled.[8][5]

When German sharpshooters opened fire, a gun battle erupted. One terrorist threw a grenade into a helicopter, and the nine hostages were murdered in the helicopters.[2] Five terrorists — commander Luttif Afif, Yusuf Nazzal, Afif Ahmed Hamid, Khalid Jawad, and Ahmed Chic Thaa — were killed, while three were captured.[2] Fliegerbauer was also killed.[4]

Zamir witnessed the outcome after German authorities had rejected his recommendations.[2] A German official initially announced incorrectly that the hostages had been freed and all the terrorists killed.[1] AFP announced the deaths of all the hostages at 2:16 a.m. Munich time; German authorities confirmed the report fifty-six minutes later.[9] The twenty-three-hour affair ended at approximately 1 a.m. on September 6.[7] ABC reporter Jim McKay summarized the outcome with the words: "They're all gone."[2]

The International Olympic Committee suspended competition for a memorial service but resumed the Games afterward.[10] IOC president Avery Brundage defended the decision: "We cannot allow a handful of terrorists to destroy this nucleus of international cooperation and goodwill we have in the Olympic movement," adding that "the games must go on."[1] Survivors and Jewish leaders later condemned the decision, while Munich officials defended it as denying the terrorists a victory.[11]

Israel withdrew its delegation on Golda Meir's orders. Delegation chief Shmuel Lalkin reportedly preferred to remain, while race-walker Shaul Ladany argued that leaving would hand the terrorists another victory.[5] Some other teams and competitors also left or opposed the resumption.[10]

Decades later, survivors and Jewish leaders criticized the IOC for declining to hold a formal commemoration during the 2012 London Olympics. The German government organized an official ceremony in September 2017, and a memorial was established in Munich's Olympic Park.[11][1] The 2020 Olympic Games, held in Tokyo in 2021, commemorated the eleven Israeli victims.[4] H. Res. 1292 urged the IOC to establish a minute of silence at every future Olympic opening ceremony, beginning with the 2024 Paris Summer Games.[4]

The three terrorists captured at Fürstenfeldbruck were held in West German custody for less than two months. On October 29, 1972, terrorists hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615 and demanded their release in exchange for the aircraft's hostages. West Germany released the three prisoners.[3]

Contemporaneous U.S. records document Israeli anger over the inadequate protection of the athletes, confused official reporting, and the performance of the German police.[7] In 1977, French authorities also released Abu Daoud, whom a World Jewish Congress report described as having played a prominent role in the attack; the decision prompted widespread protests by Jewish communities.[12]

The massacre also placed international terrorism on the United Nations agenda. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim proposed an item concerning prevention of terrorism endangering innocent lives. The General Committee revised the language to refer to underlying causes including "misery, frustration, grievance and despair," producing what an academic study calls one of the bitterest debates experienced by the General Assembly's Legal Committee.[13] Resolution 3034 (XXVII), adopted December 18, 1972, created a thirty-five-member Ad Hoc Committee on International Terrorism from which Israel was excluded.[13]

Prime Minister Golda Meir launched an intelligence campaign later known as Operation Wrath of God to pursue people alleged to have been involved in the massacre.[14] The Mossad was directed to track down those considered responsible.[3]

The campaign followed the capture and rapid release of the three surviving terrorists. The Jewish Virtual Library states that an Israeli assassination squad was assigned to pursue the surviving attackers and people involved in planning the massacre.[2][3]

Accounts of the operation's scope, targets, and individual killings conflict. One account presents competing claims about how many named targets were killed and whether Israeli agents were responsible for particular deaths.[2] Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich dramatized the campaign as the work of a Mossad hit squad and portrayed some operatives as morally conflicted. Its treatment of Palestinian justifications for violence also generated debate among viewers and scholars.[15]

In 2022, Germany agreed to pay the victims' families additional compensation reportedly worth about $30 million, release files to a historical commission, and apologize for security lapses.[2] At the fiftieth-anniversary commemoration, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier acknowledged that Germany had not protected the victims and that the events involved deadly mistakes.[2]

In 2023, Germany established an eight-member international panel of historians to review the attack. Its work was to examine the period before and after the massacre, the treatment of victims' relatives, and the culture of remembrance.[2]

Memorials to the victims have been placed in Manchester, Tel Aviv, and Munich. The IOC's Place of Mourning in Rio de Janeiro commemorates the eleven Israelis and Fliegerbauer among fifteen people killed during Olympic Games.[4] In September 2017, the German government organized an official ceremony honoring the eleven Israeli victims, and a memorial opened in Munich's Olympic Park.[1]

The massacre demonstrated the vulnerability of an international event intended to symbolize peace and goodwill. Games promoted as the "Smiling Games" or the "Games of Peace and Joy" instead became associated with tragedy and terrorism.[1]

The Israeli Defense Ministry archive places Munich within a series of Palestinian terrorist operations from 1972 to 1980, alongside the Lod Airport massacre, the Maalot massacre, the Savoy Hotel attack, and the 1976 hijacking to Entebbe.[16]

The murders carried particular historical resonance because both West Germany and Israel had hoped the Munich Games would represent an effort to overcome the past, including the memory of the Nazi-era 1936 Berlin Olympics.[10]

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reports that Fatah branches in Bethlehem and Nablus commemorated the attack in 2018. It quotes the Bethlehem branch calling the perpetrators "the heroes of the Fatah Movement" and the Nablus branch describing the massacre as a "high-quality fedayeen operation."[17] The center also reports that a 2017 Palestinian Authority history textbook presented the operation in a discussion of Palestinian resistance methods without condemning the murders.[17]

Witnesses from other delegations also carried the event's effects for decades. Karen James, a member of Canada's 1972 Olympic swimming team, later recounted her experience in the documentary Witness to Munich and said the massacre shaped her life and values.[18]

The precise prisoner demands vary among sources. Contemporaneous U.S. records refer to 200 Arab prisoners, while another historical account gives 236 people, mainly Palestinians, and names Kozo Okamoto, Andreas Baader, and Ulrike Meinhof.[7][5]

Black September's relationship with Fatah and the PLO is also described differently. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center characterizes Black September as a Fatah cover name operating with the knowledge and approval of Yasser Arafat and Fatah's senior leadership.[17] H. Res. 1292 more cautiously describes the group as having ties to Fatah through the PLO.[4] Official U.S. sources also disagree over whether four or five terrorists died at Fürstenfeldbruck.[7][8]

German security failures are documented in their broad outlines, but the historical examination continued with the establishment of an international commission in 2023. Germany's 2022 apology acknowledged security lapses and deadly mistakes surrounding the attack.[2]

Operation Wrath of God remains disputed in its scope and attribution. Published accounts disagree about the existence of a single target list, the number of people killed, and whether Israeli agents were responsible for particular deaths.[2]