IBDP Internal Assessment:
To What Extent Was the Munich Police Department Responsible for the Failed Response to the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre?
WORD COUNT: 2200
May 2022
Section A
This
investigation will aim to answer the question “To What Extent Was the
Munich Police Department Responsible for the Failed Response to the 1972
Munich Olympics Massacre”. The investigation will focus specifically on
the period between August 26th, 1972, to September 11th, 1972.
Source #1 One day in September. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald.
The
first source that will be evaluated is the documentary “One Day in
September'' which was released in 1999 and directed by Kevin McDonald.
It shows the Olympic games and the planning process, together with the
backstory of the terrorists. The purpose of the documentary is to
present the series of events that took place during the Olympic games
and their implications. The documentary displays evidence from multiple
different viewpoints. It does so by featuring and interviewing multiple
witnesses who were present during the Olympic games, such as the mayor
of Munich, the chief of police, the Bavarian minister president, the
Israeli chief of the Mossad and the only surviving terrorist that was
involved in the massacre. Portraying the viewpoints of these individuals
with different roles and backgrounds makes the source valuable as it
gives multiple first-hand accounts. This especially helps when exploring
responsibility for the 1972 Olympics massacre, as this allows us to
examine the perspective of main decision-makers during the crisis and
allows for a more all round examination of the incident. Furthermore,
since the documentary was released over 20 years after the event, the
director was able to collect more evidence for the massacre, as there
was more evidence available than what was in 1972. In addition, most
witnesses that were interviewed are not directly involved in governments
or other organisations anymore, allowing for more objective accounts.
The documentary uses no historical accounts or uninvolved investigators
besides the filmmakers, which limits the reliability. In addition, the
viewer has no way of knowing if the filmmaker included all evidence, or
if the evidence that was selected, was only to promote a narrative.
Source #2 1974. Die Spiele. München: Pro Sport. Accessed May 9, 2021
The second source is an official report by the Olympic Committee, responsible for organizing the XXth Olympic games. It was released in 1974 and is called ' “Die Spiele”. The purpose of the report is to inform about the events during the games and the Crysis. The source comes directly from the organizing committee of the Olympic games 1972, a significant primary source, as it gives us a formal institutional perspective of the events. Furthermore, the report was released just two years after the incident, which limits the report in comparison to the documentary. The report contains the planning, execution, and end of the Olympic games, together with some steps taken in order to resolve the situation. However, the report does not extensively analyze the reasoning behind the intervention measures taken after the attack and often leaves crucial details out. This is a limitation as it poses a risk for misinterpretation of evidence. Furthermore, the origin of the source presents a limitation to some extent since it would not be in the interest of the organizers of the Olympic games to make their response and preparation look flawed, causing them to possibly downplay the happenings in the report to prevent fear of future Olympic games.
Section B
Investigation
The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre was an attack on the Olympic games by the Palestinian terror organization Black September. The goal of the terrorists was to force the Israeli government to release 232 Palestinian prisoners, that were in Israeli prison. Six perpetrators would eventually break into the Israeli apartment complex, take eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, and immediately kill two after they attempted to flee. After peaceful negotiations with the terrorists failed, the Munich police would attempt 3 attempts to liberate the hostages by force attempts, which however all failed, resulting in casualties of civilians and police officers. The final attempt to free the hostages, the shootout at Fürstenfeldbruck airport, would result in massive loss of life and the death of all remaining hostages and perpetrators[1], except three of the terrorists. Looking at the deaths resulting from the forceful liberation attempts, it is apparent that the handling of the situation and the resulting massacre can be classified as a failure. This investigation will answer the research question by looking at three significant aspects; the preventative security set up at the Olympic village, the failed attempts to liberate the hostages and the Munich police department’s training and organization.
The preventative security was organized by the Olympic committee and outside of the Munich police department’s direct responsibility. The said security set up by the Olympic committee was not sufficient to prevent the hostage crisis.
Consulting the report by the Olympic committee, it becomes clear that several questionable choices regarding preventative security were taken.
The Olympic committee created a special division consisting of West German border patrol volunteers and the Munich police in order to act as security. The security force at the Olympic village was supposed to look friendly and non-threatening in order to prevent any provocation or escalation, so they wore light blue uniforms and were lightly to not armed at all. According to the Olympic committee, the police officers were chosen based on rather basic criteria, they were required to be interested in sports or be sportsmen themselves, while also possessing “decent” experience[2]. According to the Olympic committee, training would be specialized for tasks like patrolling the village, preventing trespassing and settling minor disputes. The force was split up into small groups of women and men and those were only armed during nighttime. A watch station was set up that would be manned by the German “kriminal polizei”[3] criminal police that was armed at all times and would only act in cases of major crimes. These were only a handful of officers and not allowed to perform normal patrol duties, which contributed to the little patrol coverage. Guards were set up at the gates and these would act as the only “official” entrance point. According to the documentary, one of the surviving terrorists claims, that they entered the Olympic village on the 5th of September at 4:50 am. They climbed over the fence and were able to access the premises without any security check[4]. There were little to no cameras placed next to the fence and the number of forces on patrol was insufficient to cover the entire fence. This is what allowed the terrorists entry into the premises to go unnoticed. Overall, both sources indicate, that the Olympic committee, rather than the Munich police were responsible for enabling the terrorists to enter the games unnoticed and therefore they partly hold responsibility for the overall massacre. While the security force was made up of West German police officers, they only executed what was organized and planned out by the Olympic committee.
Although there were more than two liberation attempts by force, only the first and last one are considered, as they were the most significant in terms of casualties.
When peaceful negotiations failed, the first attempt to liberate the hostages by force was made. The president of the Munich police, Manfred Schreiber formed a storm squad out of randomly selected German officers that were on scene and handed fully automatic weapons to all of them[5]. Officers were then placed on top of the Israeli apartment complex, to move through the ventilation system into the room that the hostages and perpetrators were in. The plan failed however, as the perpetrators had the TV on and cameras on the building of the GDR were live streaming the police officers repelling onto the roof, underlining the lack of planning and awareness by the command of the German police. Once the terrorists knew that danger was imminent, they realized that their demands would not be met[6] , which made it even harder to resolve the situation with minimal casualties[7]. Whilst a situation like this has to be improvised to some extent, the fact that liabilities like cameras were not considered, reflects the disorganised and rushed actions of the Munich police. This lack of thorough organization and planning ultimately led to the failure of the first forceful liberation attempt.
The last attempt to liberate the hostages resulted in an almost two hour long shootout at Fürstenfeldbruck airport. Once again the documentary provides a useful perspective. Lufthansa quickly provided a plane and its crew was assembled of police officers. Those were then supposed to apprehend the perpetrators once the hostages were free and the terrorists in the plane. The police officers however abandoned their positions and ran away a few minutes before the terrorists arrived at the airport. This highlights both a lack of discipline and organisation within the Munich police. Furthermore, the Munich police forgot to call in armoured vehicles and so, as roads had not been cleared either, they became stuck in traffic. When the vehicles finally arrived at midnight, over an hour after the first shot was fired, the terrorists panicked and threw grenades into one of the evacuation helicopters that were landed, resulting in the death of all 9 remaining Israeli hostages[8] that were trapped inside of these helicopters. In addition, the snipers that were placed at the airport were not supplied with any kind of armour or radio[9] [10] which resulted in misfires and miscoordination. The Olympic committee is exceptionally silent about any of the failures named above. As the documentary presents more primary evidence, we have to conclude that the Olympic committee report is flawed. The documentary further suggests that the German police were largely responsible for the massacre during the Munich Olympics. The repercussions can be largely ascribed to the Munich police’s area of responsibility.
The documentary suggests, that before the hostage crisis even started, the Munich police were unprepared to handle the situation due to the lack of adequate training[11]. The Munich and german federal police failed to have a special forces division for high-risk situations[12]. The police that later arrived at the Olympic village during the hostage crisis was rather ill-equipped and not trained for a circumstance of this magnitude[13], resulting in an inability to effectively resolve the situation. As the Olympic massacre 1972 was the first major case of Islamic terror in Germany, the police could not have trained to be prepared appropriately for this attack as it was an unprecedented situation.
The Olympic committee on the other hand once again gives little information about the Munich police, nor any judgement about their decisions, hence we have to rely on the documentary for the most part.
With hosting Olympic games comes the great responsibility of ensuring the safety of everyone involved through preparation, this was the task of the Munich police. Outside of Germany, major hostage situations had already taken place prior to 1972 already, such as the Canadian October Crisis 1970. It was naive for the German government and Munich police to assume that a similar situation could not occur in Germany. Therefore, the insufficient training and preparation of the Munich police were ultimately what contributed the most to their failed response and the resulting massacre.[14]
Hence, with reference to both sources, it can be concluded that the 1972 Olympics massacre is a major disaster for which the Munich police carry the most responsibility. While the Olympic committee can also be held accountable to some extent, namely for being unable to prevent the terrorists from entering the premises in the first place. The Munich police departments lack of appropriate training and organization were however the most important factors for the massacre.
Section C
Reflection
Completing this investigation gave me valuable insights into the challenges and limitations faced by historians when investigating an event in history. The process of gathering evidence, analyzing the evidence and then concluding the analysis, was made harder by the two main sources that I had. While the documentary analyses situations and decisions relatively extensively, the report by the Olympic committee mentions only very few failures of the Munich police. I thought that an institutional, professional report by the Olympic committee would be rather valuable and reflect critically on the events that took place, however that turned out to be rather untrue. While also considering more sources besides the two main sources, I could conclude that the documentary was providing much more critical information than the official report.
Another rather hard part about this investigation was the recentness of this massacre, this investigation was written less than 50 years after the massacre. The recentness, together with the fact that I live in Munich as well, made this massacre much more personal. Having a direct touch to historical events and essentially living on this history, is impressive, but also intimidating.
The selection of the evidence was also an interesting part, for example, this essay did not discuss the second liberation attempt by force, nor the peaceful liberation attempts. I made this decision to be able to evaluate the failures, as these events were in my judgement rather weak evidence. Historians have to make similar decisions when writing an argument or investigation, as not all evidence is significant or convincing. This selection could be considered biased, however, at least in the case of this essay, word count is too limited to consider everything that happened during the Olympic games that could answer the question.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald.
[2] 1974. Die Spiele. München: Pro Sport. Page 32
[3] 1974. Die Spiele. München: Pro Sport. Page 32
[4] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald. ( 18:27 ) “Jamal al Gashey”
[5] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald. ( 51:47 ) “General Ulrich K Wegener”
[6] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald.
[7] 1974. Die Spiele. München: Pro Sport. Page 35
[8] Groussard, Serge (New York, 1975), The Blood of Israel: the massacre of the Israeli athletes, the Olympics, 1972 ISBN 0-688-02910-8
[9] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald. ( 1:11:52 ) “General Ulrich K Wegener” 9
[10] Reeve, Simon. Page 103, 107 (New York, 2001), One Day in September: the full story of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre and Israeli revenge operation "Wrath of God" ISBN 1-55970-547-7
[11] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald. ( 51:47 )
[12] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald. ( 55:43 ) “Gerald Seymour”
[13] One day in september. 1999. [film] Directed by K. Mc Donald. ( 51:47 )
[14] Reeve, Simon. Page 103, 107 (New York, 2001), One Day in September: the full story of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre and Israeli revenge operation "Wrath of God" ISBN 1-55970-547-7
Extended Essay
To What Extent were the Bavarian Authorities Responsible for the massacre at the 1972 Olympics?
The
City of Munich has been host to many historical events, ranging from
local importance, as it is the capital of Bavaria, to global
significance during the Nazi time period. While some events hosted in
this city shaped the world such as the Munich conference in 1938, none
were as devastating to the city itself as the massacre at the 1972
Olympics. While no physical damage was done to the city, the
psychological damage remains 40 years later. Still many of those
citizens remaining, are unwilling to talk about much of the events as
they symbolise the disaster they turned the Olympics into. Sadly,
amongst the younger population of particularly Munich, much has been
forgotten about the massacre and some do not even know about its
existence as this part of history is not taught in German schools. For
the sake of this essay, the term “Bavarian Authorities” will cover all
levels of bureaucracy involved including but not limited to the Munich
Police, the Mayor’s office, the Bavarian Interior Ministry and all
instances of the Bavarian Government. While Federal structures such as
the Bundesgrenzschutz and Members of the West German Cabinet were
involved and their roles in the Munich massacre will not be ignored,
this Essay will focus primarily on the involvement and responsibility of
regional and local authorities.
On September 5th 1972 at
approximately 4:30 AM, eight Palestinian terrorists, affiliated with the
Black September movement, entered the Olympic village with the sole
intent of kidnapping as many Israeli athletes as possible[1]. Armed with
modified AK-47s, Tokarev Pistols and Grenades, the terrorists were
capable of seizing and holding the apartment complex with ease[2]. After
hearing scratching sounds at the door; Yossef Gutfreund, attempted to
stop the Black September squad from entering apartment 1 and managed to
buy his roommate Tuvia Sokolovsky enough time to escape through a window
saving his life[3]. After being shot through the cheek, wrestling coach
Moshe Weinberg another resident of apartment 1, was forced to show the
terrorists the other rooms of the Israeli delegation. Even though there
were Israelis in apartment 2, Weinberg managed to convince the
terrorists to move on to apartment 3 where more athletes were taken
hostage creating a total of nine hostages[4]. Following the demands of
the terrorists, the German officials in Bonn tried to convince Tel Aviv
to release 234 prisoners who were held in Israeli prisoners Israel
however, was not willing to negotiate with the terrorists and gave the
Germans full authority in the negotiations[5]. With Germany not able to
meet Black September’s demands, they had little choice but to try to buy
as much time in the hope of either convincing the terrorists of
abandoning their plans or to launch a successful rescue operation.
However, it soon became clear to all taking part in the negotiations,
that it would not be possible to resolve the problem by convincing the
terrorist leader known as Issa to divert from his orders[6]. Even in an
unprecedented and desperate offer of exchanging the Israeli hostages for
leading German politicians, the terrorists refused on the grounds that
they had “no quarrel with Germany”[7]. Therefore, Germany was left with
only the choice of mounting a rescue operation. The offer of flying the
terrorists with their hostages to an Arab nation and resolving the
deadlock there was out of the question. German officials were not
willing to have Jews once again forcefully deported from Germany to
await their (in this case potential) execution. After a failed rescue
attempt and hours of negotiating, Terrorists and Officials agreed that
the terrorists along with the hostages should be flown via helicopter to
the Airbase Fürstenfeldbruck north of Munich. There, a fuelled
Lufthansa Jet would be waiting to fly terrorists to an Arab nation of
their choice. However, Bavarian authorities had put together a plan
which would involve five snipers and six Munich police men disguised as
flight crew inside the jet. The policemen were meant to ambush two of
the terrorists who had agreed on inspecting the plane first while the
snipers picked off the other two to three terrorists. However, it was
not known until all the terrorists left the Olympic village, that there
were in fact 8 terrorists in total[8]. Furthermore after evaluating the
plan, the policemen came to the conclusion that the high chance of
ricochets was too dangerous and that a hand grenade detonation would
cause the fully fuelled jet to explode[9]. With their decision being
final, the policemen refused to follow orders and abandoned their plan.
Nevertheless, the Munich Police decided to go along with the rescue
operation. Without well equipped and sufficient amounts of snipers, with
the armoured cars stuck in traffic, the firefight between terrorists
and Police lasted for over an hour. In the end, a grenade thrown by a
terrorist blew up one helicopter and a second terrorist shot the
remaining five hostages. The tragic statistic: 11 dead Israeli athletes,
5 Black September members, 1 German police officer and an injured
sniper and helicopter pilot[10].
The issue of Responsibility on
this topic is an incredibly complex one. On the one hand, individual
responsibility has to be spread as many different individuals made
terrible decision which led to the fatal outcome of the hostage taking.
Some of these individuals remain anonymous up to this date. Others while
making mistakes had valid reasons to act differently than what they
should have done. However, overall none of the participants other than
the terrorists had bad intentions. Therefore, instead of focusing on
individual responsibility, Collective responsibility suits the situation
far better. Overall, there are three major parties, Bavarian, Israeli
and Black September, who each share a certain degree of responsibility.
While focusing on the Bavarian aspect of this, one cannot accurately and
fairly distribute blame without considering all the factors and
involving all parties. However, the concept of intent when evaluating
responsibility is just as important as the final actions of a
participant or group. Due to this, poor decisions, mistakes and intent
must be carefully analysed to conclude the extent of responsibility the
Bavarian authorities should accept.
While the rescue mission
itself was a failure, the overall failure was caused by several smaller
mistakes. The first and most crucial one was that security forces at the
Olympics were hardly in a position to stop an attack. Munich wanted to
present itself as completely changed and in no way wanted to remind the
world of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and hence the Nazi era[11]. Due to
this, security guards were not armed and only given light blue uniforms
and a walkie-talkie each[12]. They were trained to deal with small
disputes between athletes, spectators and locals. The possibility of a
hostage taking seemed so remote that while the stewards were told how to
deal with teenagers laying siege on the Olympic village, the suggestion
of training them for a hostage taking was rejected by officials as “too
unlikely”[13]. However, it was this unpreparedness which allowed eight
hostage takers, disguised as athletes, to enter the Olympic village by
climbing over gate 25A, a two meter high fence, and bring blood to the
games of peace.
Nevertheless, one should not forget that the
organisers of the 20th summer Olympics were under considerable pressure
to keep the Olympics from looking anything like the 1936 ones. Their
main goal was to show themselves as better and truly changed.
Furthermore, as Mark Spitz said, compared to the security at the
previous summer Olympics in Mexico, the security in Munich was “rather
good”. In his last press conference before returning to California,
Spitz stated that people should remain realistic, in that there were
10000 athletes present in Munich and it was impossible to protect each
and every one of them. He added that overall, the athletes themselves
had considered the security to be sufficient. This shows that not only
the organisers but everyone had thought a terrorist attack on athletes
as impossible. Additionally, while negligence is a crime under most
systems of law, morally speaking, negligence does not necessarily result
in responsibility. As long as the Bavarians had the best intentions,
they are not responsible on the same level as if their intentions had
not been pure. However, a man who does not clear the sidewalk because he
has to drive his kids to school, is still responsible when another man
slips and breaks a leg on the ice forming on the sidewalk because he did
not clear it. Nevertheless, a man is not necessarily responsible if the
second man uses the negligence of the first, and slips on purpose in
the hope of gaining a profit from it. In this case, the Bavarians had an
insane amount of preparations to make, and were mainly not prepared for
a large scale hostage taking as it had never happened at the Olympics
before and it did not occur to them that it could.
The first
major mistake during the hostage taking was that the Bavarians did not
establish a clear chain of command. During such a situation, well
trained police forces always establish clear chains of command in order
to be able to buy as much time as possible. In an ideal case, while the
negotiator has all the authority necessary to make statements on the
behalf of the police, he can always legitimately claim that he does not
have the authority to make a particular decision. Therefore, he can buy
time by claiming to have to talk to his superior, and if necessary, the
superior can also be directly involved because he too reports to a boss.
While the general mistake in this part of the operation was the chain
of command, two main missteps should be highlighted. Firstly, many
different people negotiated with the terrorists; there was never a clear
negotiator in charge. This would have eased the relationship between
the police forces and the terrorists. Instead, the persons involved in
the negotiations ranged from security guards who happened to be present
at the time, to top German government officials. For example, while the
choice of Annaliese Graes, a police women from the north of Germany, who
had volunteered for the position of security guard at the games was not
terrible, according to Simon Reeve, she was even perfect for the job.
However, Graes had no affiliation with the authorities which were
handling the operation. This only added to the chaos which was the
Olympic village on the fifth of September. The second thing was that the
Germans involved foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher who was at the
top of the food chain when it came to law enforcement. Even though he
was not capable of acting or making direct decisions due to the German
Constitution, he was expected to be able to get things done. Therefore,
once Genscher was involved, the terrorists knew that what Genscher
promised must be truthful and possible as Genscher was in a position to
get things done.
The first attempted rescue by the Munich Police
Force was a complete and utter failure. Operation Sunshine involved
border policemen which were sent onto rooftops with submachineguns. The
border policemen, disguised as athletes in tracksuites, were to enter
the apartment via its ventilation system and surprise the terrorists.
What no one had considered was that everything happening at Connolly
Straße was being recorded and shown live in TV. The terrorists, who were
watching TV, saw the attempt by the police and some of them actually
waved at policemen trying to hide. Eventually the attack was called off
Perhaps it was for the best that this attempt failed in this particular
fashion; the policemen were hopelessly outgunned and outmanned. Even
with the element of surprise it would have been a high risk operation.
Without any doubt the attack would have ended in bloodshed,
predominantly on the side of the police.
The main reason why the
Bavarian authorities can be blamed directly for the deaths of the
Israeli athletes is that they mounted a rescue operation at
Fürstenfeldbruck. It had failed mainly because the operation was poorly
planned and executed without an essential part. The team of Munich
policemen which were supposed to ambush the terrorists inside the jet
refused to follow orders and left the plane. Furthermore, there were
only five snipers armed with G3 assault rifles without any sort of
telescopic scopes and or night vision. These rifles were the standard
Bundeswehr infantry rifles and not suited for snipers at night.
Additionally, the police neglected to equip the snipers with bulletproof
vests or steel helmets. According to Ulrich Wegener, had the snipers
been equipped with these, their confidence would have been significantly
increased which would have resulted in them taking more shots at the
terrorists and taking more time to aim. To add to the list of fatal
mistakes, the snipers had no way of communicating with each other and
were not informed of the location of each other. They were simply told
to find a good spot from where to shoot. Due to this, one of the snipers
was directly in the line of fire of three of his colleagues. He fired
only one single shot which killed one of the terrorists. After this, he
was shot by a fellow sniper who mistook him as a terrorist. Even though
he survived, it lowered the count of Police snipers to 4 which only
increased the ratio of police to terrorists. In addition, three of the
originally eight police snipers were left in the Olympic village.
Whether the officials thought they would not be needed or whether they
were simply forgotten has never been answered. Despite this, five
snipers may have sufficed if they had been told where the helicopters
would land. Due to this, none of the snipers had a clear shot into the
helicopters.
Nonetheless, to fully understand the failure at
Fürstenfeldbruck, one must understand the local politics and the history
of Bavaria and Germany as a whole. Firstly, while the Olympic games
were officially given to the city of Munich as a representative of West
Germany, one must realize that Munich primarily represents Bavaria and
not Germany. Joining the German Reich under the threat of common enemies
during the “Einigungskriege” in the 19th century, Bavaria was never
eager to be part of Prussia’s empire. In fact, the only shared history
between Bavaria and Prussia were countless wars between the two Kingdoms
and the Franco-Prussian war and two World Wars. Additionally, Bavaria
has more in common with southern nations such as Austria or north Italy
than Prussia, historically and culturally. While such differences may
appear petty, still today this divide remains; one and a half centuries
after the German Unification. While Bavaria is primarily Catholic, areas
north remain Protestant. While all major political parties in Germany
are national, Bavaria has been governed by the CSU for almost 60 years
which only appoints candidates in Bavaria. It is exactly in these local
politics where documentaries such as “Seconds From Disaster” produced by
the National Geographic find their fatal flaws. Without any
understanding of the culture and history of the area, the documentary
claims that there were three main decision makers present during the
Munich massacre on the side of the Authorities; Manfred Schreiber, Bruno
Merk and Hans-Dietrich Genscher. However, both Manfred Schreiber and
Bruno Merk were born in traditional Bavarian towns and both were wounded
during World War Two. Genscher on the other hand, was from a northern
German town and part of the German federal system. Therefore, to claim
that Genscher had any authority in the response committee is not only
ill researched but ignorant. Genscher was part of this committee as a
liaison to Bonn and perhaps to give advice, but those giving the final
orders and making the decisions were Schreiber and Merk. The primary
reason for this was that Genscher was the West German Interior minister
and Merk and Schreiber represented the State Authorities. The German
Federal System and Constitution prohibits a national governmental
institution to interfere in a state’s interior affairs in a situation
such as the Olympic Games. While this particular example is of minor
importance, it shows the mentality of the Bavarians. Munich citizens and
Bavarians saw the Games as “their Games” and wanted to protect them as
their own. They felt responsible for the hostage taking and felt it was
their duty to rescue them. It was for exactly this reason why outside
help was rejected. For example, ever since the 5th of September, Israeli
Generals Dayan and Zamir have claimed that after being sent to Munich
to assist the authorities with their expertise, they were utterly
ignored by the Bavarians. Additionally, the Israeli counter terrorist
team “The Unit” was to be sent to Munich to rescue the hostages but were
never given orders to leave due to a German rejection. Both German and
Bavarian officials have denied any knowledge of such a team ever being
offered by the Israelis.
While the Bavarians made mistakes in
crucial parts of their planning, it cannot be doubted that their
intentions were good. They simply did not want Jewish blood to be shed
once again on German soil and tried literally everything they could.
Unlimited amounts of money and a replacement of the Israeli athletes
with high ranking German officials were both not accepted as possible
solutions of the conflict which left them with little choice but to act.
However, even the purest of intentions and the impudent abuse of German
hospitality cannot rid the Bavarians of the responsibility surrounding
their catastrophic failure in Fürstenfeldbruck. The disaster was simply
too great to grant the officials involved immunity from all possible
charges.
Therefore, while the terrorists are undoubtedly to blame
for the deaths of the Israeli athletes, the Bavarian authorities and
their countless mistakes have a certain degree of responsibility. This
responsibility was sadly never fully accepted by the Bavarian
authorities and the Munich police. For almost forty years now, denial
and poor excuses have shaped the face of official statements. Instead of
simply admitting mistakes, time after time legal battles with the
families of the athletes have been fought. Nevertheless, the Israeli
government with their policy of not negotiating with terrorists did not
make it easy for the Bavarians and effectively removed any sorts of
peaceful negotiations. Therefore, they too should not be left untouched
when responsibility of the deaths is divided as they too played a major
role in the bloodshed. Nevertheless, many people have since criticised
that if there had been a counter terrorist squad in Germany at the time,
things would have ended differently. However in 1972 before the 5th of
September, there had simply not been the necessity for such a squad.
After the Olympics, when everyone in Germany realised that the world had
changed and the normal police was no longer capable of handling every
one of its duties, two units were created. The GSG9, an elite counter
terrorist unit under the leadership of Ulrich Wegener, a German general
who was chief advisor to Hans-Dietrich Genscher and was present during
the fiasco at the Olympics, was founded on the 26th of September, not
two months after the massacre. While the GSG9 is considered to be one of
the best Counter Terrorist units of the world and widely known for its
success on a Hostage rescue in Mogadishu in 1977, the less known but far
more important SEK or Sonder Einsatz Kommando was founded at the same
time as the GSG9. The SEK was intended to be Germany’s version of SWAT,
and was made up of above average police officers whose only duties were
to the SEK. These units mainly deal with hostage takings, organised
crime and other dangerous police duties. Nowadays, each LKA or Landes
Kriminal Amt has at least one SEK at their disposal. Hence, while being
responsible for the deaths of the hostages due to their incapability to
rescue them, they showed good intentions during and after the event by
attempting to solve the situation by any means other than violence and
learning from their mistakes and unpreparedness.
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Süddeutsche Zeitung
