Status: 08/30/2022 5:00 p.m
Eleven Israeli athletes were murdered during the 1972 Munich Olympics. A research of BR shows on the basis of new documents and statements how extensively German authorities have failed.
Walter Renner was on duty as a simple patrolman on September 5, 1972 in Olympia-Dorf. The now retired policeman still remembers the chaos today: “Ultimately, we were not prepared for this situation at all. Not at all. Neither in terms of training, nor in terms of armament, nor in terms of tactics, not at all.”
In August, Renner returned to the scene of the attack and remembers: At the door of the house at Connollystrasse 31, he and his colleagues – all young city police officers without any additional training – were supposed to eliminate the terrorists on the way to the getaway vehicle. But the operation failed, also because TV cameras not only broadcast the negotiations with the Palestinian hostage-takers live, but also the police’s preparations for the operation.
New documents show misjudgment
Walter Renner is surprised when he unpublished documents, result of a BR-Research, shown: The authorities had mainly expected asylum seekers and asylum applications from Eastern European Olympic teams. Even the Federal Intelligence Service was involved in the months-long preparations. On May 31, 1972 he was instructed to produce forms in 12 languages for asylum seekers from the Eastern bloc report Munich may now publish for the first time. Quote from a form from the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 1972: “I ask the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany for political asylum. I ask you to ensure my safety (… and will …) not leave the accommodation area until the end of the Olympic Games.” The security authorities had thought of everything at the time, just not a terrorist attack.
Ankie Spitzer lost her husband at the time, the Israeli fencer Andrei Spitzer, in the 1972 assassination attempt. To this day, it is not only the failure of the German security authorities during the assassination that annoys her. In the decades that followed, she and the other survivors were lied to and humiliated by politicians and the authorities.
Almost all of them are now seriously considering boycotting the commemoration event on September 5 in Munich in protest: Spitzer says that although they should have given a speech, she doesn’t know what to thank Germany for. Because according to Spitzer: “Germany has done nothing for us, the opposite is correct.”
Pact with Terror?
In fact, the ARD political magazine reported report Munich already in 2013 about an outrageous suspicion: just a few weeks after the Olympic attack in 1972 there is said to have been a secret “deal” between Germany and the Palestinians. Three of the hostage-takers survived the attack. They were in prison in Munich – a security risk for Germany. Then, spectacularly, they were suddenly released.
On the morning of October 29, 1972 – seven weeks after the Olympic attack – the Lufthansa plane LH 615 was hijacked on the flight from Beirut to Munich. The Palestinian kidnappers demanded the release of the three surviving Olympic bombers.
At this point, everything in Munich is miraculously prepared. A letter from the Munich police chief is found in the Munich State Archives – written eleven days before the plane was hijacked. It is about the “possible deportation of the three arrested Arabs” and the conditions for their release. The document states: “In order to be able to speed up the formalities associated with the deportation (…), the Office for Public Order has already issued expulsion orders, which are being kept by the Munich Criminal Police Department.”
Was the Lufthansa hijacking a set-up? There is much to be said for it and nothing against it. City police officer Walter Renner, who later became head of the Munich police press office, was also on duty on the day of the hijacking. He escorted the three attackers to the airport in Munich-Riem. For the first time he tells in an interview report Munich: In police circles, they knew in advance about the liberation: “It wasn’t out of the blue. I already knew about non-commissioned officer wires, so one of the criminal police told me that sooner or later it would happen.”
Israel did not trust the Germans
Did Germany want to cover up its own mistakes? In the UK could report Munich already in 2013 have been able to view files in the National Archives, in which the Foreign Ministry in London files its correspondence with its embassy in Tripoli.
A conversation with the German ambassador in Tripoli from October 1972 is documented. It says: “…the Germans knew in advance that something was going to happen on October 30.” And further: “… in Tripoli they had been waiting for the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane for 15 days.”
Did Germany want to avoid a public trial by releasing them? At least that’s what Ankie Spitzer, the widow of the Israeli fencing trainer Andrei Spitzer, who was murdered in Munich, thinks. She not only accuses the German authorities of being sloppy, but also sees the behavior of the federal government as a tactic to cover up: “In order to cover up one’s own failure, it was the best way to get rid of the assassin quickly. That way, one could avoid a real investigation.”
More on this today at 9.45 p.m. in the ARD political magazine report Munich.