The 1972 Munich Olympics were viewed by their German hosts as a chance to leave the country’s history behind. Instead, the Games became notorious for terrorism after an attack on Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants that left 12 victims dead, as well as five attackers.
The attack on Israeli athletes in Munich more than half a century ago sparked an international crisis. That crisis continues to reverberate, with Germany agreeing in 2022 to pay 28 million euros ($29.5 million) to the families of the 11 slain Israelis (a German police officer was also among those killed). For decades, the families contended that Germany had not done enough to protect Israeli athletes.
Munich had sought the Games in a bid to change Germany’s global reputation. No German city had hosted them since 1936, when Adolf Hitler used the international stage afforded by the Berlin Olympics to promote Nazi propaganda.
Although World War II had long ended, the Berlin Wall would not fall for 17 more years. The divided nation was eager to shed the Nazi memory that continued to dominate the country’s global profile, so West Germany hoped to project an image of happiness and unity, both to spectators in the Munich stands and audience members tuning in on television.
That image came crashing down in the early hours of Sept. 5, 1972, when eight Palestinian militants from the group Black September stormed the Olympic Village dorm of 11 Israeli athletes.
Black September leaders had hoped to use the international viewership of the Olympics — the same television audience that West Germany itself sought — to bring global attention to the plight of Palestinians.
The attack came just five years after the 1967 Middle East war. In that conflict, often referred to as the Six-Day War, Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, while Arab armies bore massive losses.
The eight militants killed two of the athletes immediately. They took the nine others, who were handcuffed and beaten, as hostages. Black September demanded the release of more than 200 political prisoners from Israel, West Germany and other nations; if the countries failed to release the prisoners, they said, they would kill one hostage an hour until the demands were met.
The United States quickly pulled swimmer Mark Spitz — who had won seven gold medals, a record that would remain unbroken until Michael Phelps’s eight in the 2008 Beijing Olympics — out of the Olympic Village, worried that he, as a prominent Jewish American, would also be targeted.
Germany tried to rescue the kidnapped Israelis for 20 hours, but was repeatedly thwarted. As negotiations stalled, the Black September members demanded an airplane that night to fly the nine hostages to an Arab nation.
German officials tried to trap the extremists. They planned to send five snipers to a German air force base outside Munich and staff the Lufthansa airplane with police officers, charged with defeating the group and rescuing the hostages. By West German law, the army was barred from involving itself in what was deemed a civil affair — so the burden fell on 14 local police officers who lacked experience in counterterrorism.
But the officer in charge considered the operation to be a suicide mission, Munich police officer Guido Schlosser told The Post in 2022, and proposed abandoning the plan. The plane was empty when the militants boarded.
Black September and its hostages arrived at the air base via helicopters. But when the militants boarded the plane, they realized it was a trap. As the German snipers opened fire, the Palestinian militants hurled grenades at the helicopters. One German police officer, the nine remaining Israeli hostages and five of the Palestinian militants were killed. The three other members of Black September were arrested.
In the years that followed the tragedy, the athletes’ families accused Germany of botching its response to the attack and failing to save lives.
It was later discovered that before the attack, German officials had received a warning of potential action by Palestinian militants. But amid a desire to promote an image of peace and unity, they decided to station unarmed security officers at Olympic venues, instead of armed police officers.
After Black September killed two Israeli athletes and took the nine hostages, West Germany contacted Israeli officials — who were more experienced at negotiating with terrorists — but ultimately turned down their offers of help. The police officers who abandoned the plane were young and inexperienced, and they were not equipped to handle an attack of this magnitude.
The 1972 Olympics have remained a painful memory for many people over the past 52 years, as shown by reactions last week to an Adidas promotional campaign.
The sportswear and sneakers company launched advertisements to re-promote its SL72 shoes — a pair of trainers first introduced to coincide with the 1972 Games. But the campaign faced almost immediate backlash as consumers and brand ambassadors alike accused Adidas of highlighting the violence that racked the Munich Olympics.
Meanwhile, the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza have contributed to a tense political atmosphere surrounding this year’s Olympics, with calls from the Palestinian Olympic Committee and others to ban Israeli athletes from the Games.
Israeli news outlets have reported that the country’s athletes have received threatening messages by email and phone over the past week. Messages sent from “the People’s Defense Organization” to 15 athletes said the group aims “to repeat the events of Munich 1972,” the Times of Israel reported, and some athletes have received invitations to their own funerals.
A video circulating on social media Tuesday afternoon showed an individual, whose face is concealed by a kaffiyeh, addressing France and French President Emmanuel Macron in Arabic and making threats against Paris. At the end of the minute-long message, the speaker holds up what appears to be a plastic bloodied head.
“You supported the zionist regime in its criminal war against the people of Palestine,” read subtitles on the video, which is in Arabic. The Washington Post could not confirm the origin of the video or its veracity.
France plans to deploy 35,000 police officers each day of the Games, with 45,000 on duty during the Opening Ceremonies. The security plan also includes surveillance flights and drones, fighter jets, and helicopters carrying sharpshooters, the Associated Press reported. The effort is supported by more than 40 countries that have jointly sent at least 1,900 officers as reinforcements, including from the Los Angeles Police Department.
According to French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, France has banned nearly 4,000 people from attending Olympic events based on the results of extensive background checks, including individuals espousing extreme right- or left-wing ideologies and suspected Islamist extremists. He added that authorities are also paying close attention to Russian and Belarusian citizens.
Paris has a history of terrorist attacks, most recently in 2015, when shootings and bombings by Islamic State attackers in six locations across the French capital killed at least 130 people and wounded more than 350.
In May, Darmanin said an 18-year-old man had been arrested in the French town of Saint-Étienne for allegedly planning an attack on the Olympics in the name of the Islamic State, Reuters reported. Darmanin said the alleged plot was the first known to have targeted the Games.
