Munich Olympics Massacre

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, members of the Palestinian group Black September took Israeli athletes and coaches hostage in the Olympic Village. By the end of the crisis, eleven Israelis and one West German police officer were dead, along with five of the eight attackers. The attack, carried out in front of a vast global television audience, remains the darkest episode in Olympic history and reshaped both international counterterrorism and Olympic security.

The Games had been intended by West Germany to present a new, open and peaceful image of the country, deliberately contrasting with the 1936 Berlin Olympics held under the Nazis. Security was correspondingly low-key, with unarmed guards and a relaxed atmosphere, and the perimeter fence of the Olympic Village was not difficult to climb. Black September, a militant group linked to the Palestinian nationalist movement, saw the Games as an opportunity for worldwide publicity for its cause amid the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.

In the early hours of 5 September, armed men entered the apartment housing the Israeli team. They killed two Israelis, a wrestling coach and a weightlifter, during the initial struggle and seized nine others. The attackers demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, along with two German militants held in West Germany. Israel's government refused to negotiate on those terms. German officials offered money and safe passage, and a plan to ambush the attackers at the Olympic Village was abandoned.

That night the terrorists and hostages were taken by helicopter to the NATO airbase at Fürstenfeldbruck, supposedly to board a plane. A rescue attempt by German police there went badly wrong. The police were poorly trained for such an operation, had too few snipers, and lacked adequate communications and equipment. A gunfight followed, and the attackers killed all nine remaining hostages. Initial reports mistakenly suggested that the hostages had been saved.

The Games were suspended for about a day, and a memorial service was held in the stadium before competition resumed, a decision that drew both support and criticism. Germany soon created the elite counterterrorism unit GSG 9, and many other countries strengthened or established similar forces. Israel launched covert operations against those it held responsible, an effort dramatized in later films and debated by historians and commentators. Three captured attackers were released weeks later after a hijacking of a Lufthansa flight, a development that fueled suspicion and controversy in Germany. Families of the victims long campaigned for formal recognition, and the International Olympic Committee held an official commemoration at the 2012 London Games.