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—— ON THIS DAY ——
SEPTEMBER 5, 1972
Munich, West Germany
54 years ago
The Munich massacre of September 5 and 6, 1972, in which members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and killed during the Summer Games in Munich.
In the early hours of September 5, 1972, eight members of the Palestinian group Black September climbed a perimeter fence into the Olympic Village in Munich, carrying weapons in athletic bags. They forced their way into the apartments housing the Israeli delegation. Two Israelis were killed in the initial struggle. Nine others were taken hostage. The gunmen demanded the release of prisoners held in Israel and in West Germany.
What followed was broadcast live to a global television audience of hundreds of millions. Negotiations dragged through the day while cameras watched the building. That evening the gunmen and their hostages were flown by helicopter to a nearby airfield, where German police had prepared an ambush. The rescue attempt failed catastrophically. In the shooting that followed, all nine remaining hostages were killed, along with five of the gunmen and a German police officer.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The Olympic Games, the international sporting event whose security arrangements were transformed permanently by the events in Munich in 1972.
West Germany had deliberately planned the 1972 Games as a demonstration that the country had changed since 1936, when Berlin had hosted the Olympics under the Nazi government. Security was intentionally light and unarmed, and the atmosphere was meant to be open and cheerful. The Olympic Village fence was low enough that athletes routinely climbed it after curfew, and the gunmen who went over it that night were reportedly helped up by returning athletes who assumed they were doing the same.
The rescue operation at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield was badly planned and badly executed. German police had no dedicated counter-terrorism unit, no armored vehicles on hand, and too few marksmen, none of whom had specialist training or radio contact with one another. A plan to place officers disguised as crew aboard the waiting aircraft was abandoned by the officers themselves shortly before the helicopters arrived. When shooting started, the situation collapsed into a prolonged and chaotic firefight.
The Games were suspended for a day and then resumed, a decision that remains controversial. The aftermath reshaped security and counter-terrorism across the West. West Germany created the specialist unit GSG 9, and other countries followed with similar formations. Olympic security budgets grew from an afterthought into one of the largest costs of hosting. Israel responded with a long campaign of targeted operations against those it held responsible. For decades the families of the victims campaigned for official acknowledgment and compensation from Germany, which was finally agreed in 2022, fifty years after the attack.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
It transformed security at international events. The failures in Munich led directly to the creation of specialist counter-terrorism units in West Germany and elsewhere, and turned Olympic security from an afterthought into one of the largest costs of hosting the Games.
It demonstrated the use of global media as a stage for political violence. The attack unfolded live before an audience of hundreds of millions, and the calculation that a hostage crisis at the Olympics would command worldwide attention proved correct. That calculation has been repeated many times since.
It shaped decades of Israeli policy and Middle Eastern conflict. The killings and the campaign Israel mounted in response became a defining episode in a conflict whose consequences continue to unfold, and a subject of enduring argument about the ethics of retaliation.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On September 5, 1972, gunmen climbed a low fence into the Olympic Village in Munich. Two Israeli team members were killed at once and nine more died in a failed rescue at an airfield that night. The Games resumed the next day. Security at every major international event since has been built around what went wrong.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“They're all gone.”
— Broadcaster Jim McKay, confirming the fate of the hostages to American viewers, September 6, 1972
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the Munich Olympics attack, the failed rescue at Fürstenfeldbruck, the decision to continue the Games, and the changes to international security that followed?
