Olympic Bloodshed: Munich Massacre Shocks World

Eight men in tracksuits scaled the fence of the Olympic Village in Munich at 4:30 a.m. on September 5, 1972, carrying duffel bags loaded with AK-47 assault rifles, Tokarev pistols, and hand grenades. Within minutes, the Palestinian group Black September had forced their way into the Israeli team's apartment at 31 Connollystrasse, killing wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossef Romano during the initial assault and taking nine other Israeli athletes and coaches hostage. The gunmen demanded the release of 234 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel and two German leftist militants held in West Germany. The crisis played out on live television for 21 hours as roughly 900 million people watched worldwide, making it the first major terrorist attack broadcast in real time to a global audience. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir refused to negotiate or release prisoners, telling the German government that giving in to demands would invite attacks on Israeli citizens everywhere. The German authorities, lacking a specialized counterterrorism unit, devised a rescue plan that relied on police sharpshooters positioned at the military airfield at Furstenfeldbruck, where the kidnappers had demanded a plane to fly to Cairo. The rescue attempt was catastrophic. German snipers opened fire on the terrorists as they inspected the waiting aircraft, but there were only five sharpshooters for eight gunmen, and they had no telescopic sights, no communication radios, and no coordinated plan of attack. In the ensuing gun battle, the terrorists killed all nine remaining hostages, executing some inside the helicopters with automatic weapons and grenades. Five of the eight Black September members were killed, and three were captured. The Munich Massacre transformed international security permanently. Germany created GSG 9, its elite counterterrorism unit, and other nations followed with similar forces. Israel launched Operation Wrath of God, a years-long covert assassination campaign targeting Palestinians connected to the attack. The Olympics, conceived as a symbol of peaceful international competition, had become a stage for political violence, and the security apparatus surrounding major global events has never returned to its pre-Munich innocence.