Munich ignores German blunders

ON the night of September 4, 1972, when Black September personnel were preparing to attack the Israeli quarters in Munich's Olympic village, I was sitting at a crowded table in one of the city's noisiest beer halls. The table was an odd mixture. There was a small group of recent graduates from Melbourne University law school. We were on a long camping tour of Europe and had decided to take in the Games. The rest of the table was occupied by members of the chorus of Milan's La Scala opera company, which was performing in Munich. Everyone joined in some singing, although it was no surprise that the chorus had much better voices.

When the beer hall closed, we set off for our camping spot about 20km outside the town. All the official camping grounds were full so we simply chose a wood near the site of the former Dachau concentration camp. Its proximity to Munich was a reminder that the existence of such places was hardly a secret in the German community of the 1930s.

Next morning we woke late. The one-litre steins of strong beer had taken a heavy toll. We heard the news about the village and, along with a lot of the locals, drove to that part of town. The village was in a bowl and it was possible to look down on it from the surrounding heights. Although so close to the scene, we knew less about what was happening than if we had been watching television on the other side of the world. But it was only much later that anyone found out the full story of that day.

It is possible to enjoy Steven Spielberg's new film, Munich, as a thriller. But there are two important points that it does not make. The first is that it does not highlight the moral distinction between the killing of a group of athletes by members of a paramilitary organisation and the later killing of some Black September operatives by members of an Israeli security organisation. It is normal in a wartime situation to expect soldiers to kill each other but not - by most moral standards - to intentionally kill civilians.

Putting aside this question, however, the film does not deal with the most extraordinary aspects of these events: the conduct of the German authorities in Munich and the attitude of the International Olympic Committee. The Munich police would not allow Israel to send a team to mount an assault on the building occupied by Black September. We know, because all the captured athletes were ultimately killed, that no result of such an attack could have been any worse than the final outcome.

 

The Germans never launched an assault of their own either. At one point they made plans for an attack but called it off when it became clear that the preparations were being televised to the world at large, including the Black September invaders of the village. This was because the area around the occupied building had not even been sealed off from the media.

Later in the day the Germans agreed to a bizarre scheme under which the hostages and their captors would go by helicopter to a local airport where a plane would be provided by the authorities. This was to be a trap. The plane was occupied by armed police officers who would engage the terrorists. Shortly before the arrival at the airport of the helicopters carrying the hostages, the police on the plane decided that this was a dangerous mission and voted to call it off. Without consulting their superiors, they left the plane standing empty.

When the terrorists and the hostages approached the plane, there were some unco-ordinated shots fired by snipers. The snipers were not professional marksmen. They had no radio contact with each other. None of the rifles carried scopes or night-vision sights. Some of the terrorists survived and killed all the remaining athletes.

Three of the terrorists remained alive but, instead of being tried and imprisoned, they were released by the German government shortly afterwards in response to the supposed hijacking of a Lufthansa plane by Black September. So quickly was this arrangement arrived at that there are grounds for suspicion that the government knew in advance of the hijacking and allowed it to occur in order to have an excuse for releasing the survivors.

This astonishing record of German incompetence - or worse - is the real story of the Munich Games. It should be noted, however, that the conduct of the IOC was dreadful in its own way. It grudgingly suspended the Games for two days but then resumed them as if nothing had happened.

The whole episode was a reminder to the Israelis of something they already knew: that they could expect no sympathy in Germany and little in the international community generally. Spielberg's film is careful to make no moral judgments. That is his choice, but its audiences need to be aware of the historical realities.

Michael Sexton is the NSW Solicitor-General.