The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre Part 6
The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre Part 6
Conclusion
Aftermath of the grenade being tossed into the helicopter holding four of the hostages
The Beginning of the End
“I remember thinking at the time this was going to be resolved. It seemed like a denouement was coming but … I know at the time that I thought it was going to be resolved politically.”
Peter Jennings
The day had started off as a nightmare. Nine hostages were being held by armed terrorists in the Olympic Village in Germany. At the beginning of the ordeal, the terrorists murdered two Israelis.
It was now late afternoon and the members of Black September still held the upper hand. This was despite being surrounded by thousands of police officers.
After a long day, the terrorists felt mentally exhausted. They knew they couldn’t keep this up forever. Issa (the leader) was acting even more nervous than he had been at the start.
Instead of keeping the terrorists confined in the village, the police planned a sophisticated trap at the Fürstenfeldbruck airbase.
The plan was bound for failure because every moving part had already malfunctioned.
Extra lights had not been brought to Fürstenfeldbruck. It would be too dark for the snipers to do their jobs.¹
No one had called the armored division in advance.²
No one had informed the leader at Fürstenfeldbruck that there were eight terrorists.³
Undercover police had abandoned their posts aboard the 727.⁴
The moment the helicopters left the village the nine hostages were as good as dead.
Zvi Zamir
Prior to arriving at the airfield, Mossad director, Zvi Zamir, had high hopes for success. But the sight of the dark airfield worried him.
The Germans allowed him to only observe. They made it clear his advice wasn’t welcome.
After making his way to the second floor of the terminal, he saw the snipers didn’t even have real sniper rifles.⁵
Golda Meir, back home in Tel Aviv, was also under the impression the Germans had the situation under control. Eventually Zamir’s full report would make it back to her. For now, she was in Tel Aviv believing her nine countrymen were in expert hands. She was about to have a terrible night.
The Plan Falls Apart
The most critical part of the trap sat idling on the edge of the tarmac. A 727 carried seventeen police officers disguised as airline crew. Their job was to overwhelm Issa and his deputy as they inspected the plane.
At that point, the snipers were to open fire on the remaining terrorists. Then the armored vehicles would move in to secure the hostages.
The 727 now sat idle because the policemen had deserted the plane because they decided the plan was too dangerous.
As soon as the helicopters touched down, Issa and his cowboy hat clad deputy sprinted to inspect the plane. The hostages, split between the two helicopters, were still bound. The rest of the Palestinians continued to hold them at gunpoint.
The moment Issa set foot on the deserted plane, he knew it was a trap. The two Palestinians ran back towards the helicopters. And that’s when the snipers started shooting.
Accuracy was low since the snipers had no scopes and no night vision. The Palestinians fired back, starting a standoff with the hostages still tied up in the helicopters.
The armored vehicles were supposed to move in and rescue the hostages at this point. They were still stuck in traffic between Munich and the airbase.
Now that the shooting had turned into yet another stalemate, Zvi Zamir repeatedly tried to offer advice to the Germans, only to be ignored.⁶
Finally, Zamir had had enough. He went to the Germans and begged them to allow him to negotiate with the hostages. This time, he was allowed to go onto the roof and attempt some sort of communication. But the terrorists simply fired their machine guns at him. The time for negotiations had passed.
With automatic weapons firing all around them, some of the hostages fought to get out of the ropes binding them. None of them had any success. They were in the most danger they had been in during the ordeal.
Issa was wounded but able to make it back to the helicopters. His deputy was more seriously hurt, and would end up being killed by one of the snipers.
The shooting went on for almost two hours until Issa sprayed the interior of one of the helicopters, before throwing in a hand grenade. At the same time one of the other terrorists opened fire into the second helicopter at nearly point blank range. With those actions, the last hopes of saving the hostages were gone.
Snipers continued firing, killing all but three of the Palestinians.
Bad Information
The confused situation at the airport led to several inaccurate reports. The most devastating being that every hostage had survived. Despite there being no official news, people wanted good news after so many things had gone wrong during the day.
Millions went to sleep under the impression that the nine Israelis were safe.
At around midnight, the true story emerged.
Still wearing swim trunks under his suit, Jim McKay delivered the news to the millions still tuned into the ABC broadcast.
“When I was a kid, my father used to say our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said that there were 11 hostages. Two were killed in their rooms. . . . Nine others were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.”⁷
Aftermath
For most of the world, McKay’s stunning news was the end of the ordeal. The world went back to what it had been doing the day before.
But decisions had to be made by the Olympic Committee. They had already planned a memorial service for the two hostages that were first killed. They expanded it to a service for all eleven. Then, in an amazing display of arrogance, the Olympics continued.
Take a moment to imagine that the organizers expected many athletes, mere children, to compete as if nothing had occurred. Of course, the entire Jewish team returned home with the bodies of their dead teammates. But the knowledge that the games were moving on left many Israelis feeling abandoned by the IOC.
IOC President Avery Bundage had a history of racism and antisemitism dating all the way back to the 1936 games. His speech, during the memorial on September 6, stood as an affront to every fair-minded individual. He could not resist mentioning that there was an effort to keep the racist Rhodesia team out of the games. This had nothing to do with the Israeli team and offended the Israelis in attendance.⁸ Then he finished by declaring that the games would be delayed for one day and then resume.
Not only was the Olympic Committee guilty of a lackluster approach to the first terrorist attack on an Olympics, the highest levels of German government did not even seem to care. Records exposed in 2012, indicate Chancellor Brandt referred to the massacre simply as a “crazy incident.” Other senior officials called it "events in Munich."⁹
The German Interior Ministry changed the status of Black September to 'resistance group.' This meant they were officially saying the acts of terror were directed against Hitler as opposed to Israelis.¹⁰
But it gets worse. The three surviving Palestinians were quickly taken into custody, but they didn't stay incarcerated long.
Seven weeks later, a Lufthansa airliner was highjacked en route from Beirut to Frankfurt. There were only thirteen passengers on board, but this did not stop the hijackers from demanding the release of the Palestinian prisoners. Without thinking to consult Israel, Germany immediately released the three, allowing them to onto the plane with the thirteen hostages.
This is where it got more embarrassing for the Germans. The hijackers were supposed to then release their hostages, but they took them with the now free Black September terrorists to Tripoli.
The only surviving member of the original terrorists, Jamal Al-Gashey, found out the full plan after reaching safety.
“As I found out later, an agreement had been made with the German government for our release after the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane.”
This action fit the German pattern of handling terrorism in the 1970s. Officials like Willy Brandt made desperate agreements with Palestinian and other organizations in an effort to keep them off of German soil. In February of the same year, Germany paid the PLO¹¹ a $5 million ransom during another Lufthansa hijacking.¹²
To this day, Jamal Al-Gashey lives a life of seclusion, worried that one day the Mossad will find him. He has never faced any type of punishment for his crimes. In fact, he was treated as a hero when he returned home. He has no regrets for actions during the 1972 Olympics.
The bodies of the five dead terrorists were flown to Tripoli where there were mourned by over thirty thousand during the funeral procession. The Arab world took no responsibility for the Israeli murders.
Conclusion
Decades after the terrible events of September 5, 1972, the German government has still not released all the documents they have. There is also a complete film of the shootout at the airport that has been kept hidden from the public.
It was only in 2022, fifty years after the incident that Germany issued an official apology.
"As head of state of this country and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, I ask your forgiveness. I ask for your forgiveness for the lack of protection for the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich and for the lack of trying to find explanations afterward.”¹³
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier 9/5/2022
Thank you for reading this series. With your continued support, I fully intend to publish many more in depth historical articles. I hope that I have provided you with information you were not aware existed. My goal is to avoid tired retreads of events, but to bring them alive for the reader.
I also need to make mention of the excellent book One Day in September (see footnotes) and the outstanding work done by the journalists at Haaretz (
https://www.haaretz.com
). There are many other resources available online and I have done my best to pull them together into something cohesive and updated.
I leave you with the following video from September 1972 of high school students in Tel Aviv is available on YouTube, and serves as a fitting ending.
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For more information, please see the footnotes.
Footnotes
The police had no night vision equipment. They also had no radios for communication.
The armored division wasn't requested until 20 minutes after the shooting started. They would be hopelessly caught in heavy traffic for hour.
Police based the count of five on old information.
And they didn't let anyone know they had abandoned the plane. To this day, German authorities claim these men were merely backup.
One Day in September. NTSC, Dolby, Color, Closed-captioned, DVD, Subtitled, Dubbed, Widescreen, Documentary. Sony Pictures Classics, 2005.
Ahren, Raphael. “Forty Years after Munich, Documents Show Israel Acknowledging Its Failures, Germany Ducking Blame.” Accessed August 14, 2024. http://www.timesofisrael.com/forty-years-after-munich-two-countries-reflect-on-what-went-wrong/.
Sokolove, BY Michael. “The Unexpected Anchor.” The New York Times, December 24, 2008, sec. Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/magazine/28mcKay-t.html.
Bundage would later apologize for any linkage between the two events. Reeve, One Day in September, Location 3006.
Ahren, Raphael. “Forty Years after Munich, Documents Show Israel Acknowledging Its Failures, Germany Ducking Blame.” http://www.timesofisrael.com/forty-years-after-munich-two-countries-reflect-on-what-went-wrong/.
Ibid
The Palestinian Liberation Organization, led by Yasser Arafat, was a sponsor of Black September. See part 1 of this series.
Reeve, One Day in September, Location 3411.
Schuetze, Christopher F. “50 Years After Attack at Munich Olympics, a Formal German Apology.” The New York Times, September 5, 2022, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/world/europe/germany-israel-apology-munich-games.html.