Don Milne: An ideal of harmony ripped apart

Don Milne

In the days of the ancient Greek Olympics, harmony prevailed during the Games. All conflicts were suspended, all arguments deferred; the universal theme was peace.

The Olympic Games in Munich aimed for that ideal. It took just a few blood-thirsty fanatics to destroy it.

Ironically, the day the crisis began, Tuesday, September 5, 1972, was gorgeous, I recall. The sun was bright, the air warm and still.

Munich, one of Germany's most attractive cities - as thousands of Kiwis who have caroused at the yearly Oktoberfest can testify - was looking its best in this last week of the 20th Olympic Games.

Other German cities, especially Berlin, still bore the scars of World War II, but Munich had been rebuilt, polished to perfection, a picture-book setting.

Germany, then divided into two countries, set great store on these Games.

Twenty-seven years after the war that had devastated Europe and almost destroyed its initiator, West Germany was determined to prove to the world that it was a free, democratic, peace-loving economic powerhouse in which such things could never happen again.

Another theme, rarely stated within the nation's borders, was to expunge the memories of the previous time the Olympic Games were held in Germany.

That was at Berlin in 1936, three years after fanatically racist demagogue Adolf Hitler had bullied his way to power.

New Zealanders remember Hitler's Olympics, if they think of them at all, for Jack Lovelock's epic victory in the 1500m.

Others recall the great feats of a Black American called Jesse Owens, who infuriated the Fuehrer by winning four gold medals and effectively demolishing Hitler's mad theories of a white super-race set in place to lord it over "subhumans" such as Africans and Jews.

Mad or not, those theories were to lead to a terrible war and some of the worst atrocities in history.

The 1936 Olympics were meant to be a propaganda exercise for Hitler, the Nazis and the so-called "Aryan Nation".

The 1972 Games had its propaganda element, too, setting out to cleanse the nation of that hideous past.

Munich, while ideal in many ways as a venue, also had its dark history.

It was here that Hitler established his Nazi party headquarters in 1919, and here that in 1923 he led his abortive attempted coup that ended in his being tried for high treason.

He was sentenced to five years in prison but served only nine months, using the time to write his notorious Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), in which he set out his strategy for world domination and his anti-semitism.

Dachau, the first of the Nazi concentration camps, is just a few kilometres up the road.

And it was from Munich that an ineffectual British Prime Minister named Neville Chamberlain returned in 1938, promising "peace for our time".

Less than a year later, Germany was invading Poland.

Munich carries this baggage, but it was well in the background on that mild September day.

Why was I there? Not as an athlete, nor as a reporter covering the Games, but as one of many overseas guests invited to see the new Germany in action.

My group included Brazilians, Africans, Argentines, the odd Australian and an elderly Canadian sports reporter whose ancient blazer proclaimed that he had represented Canada in lacrosse at the Olympics in 1924.

We were taken to see the sights of Munich and many of the sports - generally given a good time. The atmosphere was great, the welcome warm and friendly.

The night before September 5 I had been a tiny, non-glittering part of the glittering crowd who attended the premiere of Italy's contribution to the cultural festival, La Scala of Milan in a spectacular performance of Aida.

A rising young Spanish tenor played Radames - he could go far, said the experts. His name? Placido Domingo.

When Tuesday dawned bright and clear, some of us were taken to horse-riding - dressage at the Nymphenburg Palace, a tram-ride from our hotel.

Now dressage, a discipline in which horse and rider go through a series of set, intricate manoeuvres, is undoubtedly enthralling to horsey people.

To ordinary folk, the third or fourth pair doing exactly the same thing is as enthralling as synchronised swimming.

So, late morning, my guide/interpreter and I set off back to the hotel. I had to prepare for a flight to the next stop, Hamburg, early in the evening.

As soon as we came in, it was clear something was wrong.

The hotel had set up a big television screen in the lounge beside the lobby. There were usually just a few people watching, a buzz of conversation and occasional applause.

This time the room was crowded, and not a sound was to be heard except from the grim-faced announcer on the screen.

"It's the village," said my ashen-faced guide Gisela. "Terrorists have got in, and are holding the Israeli team hostage.

"They're threatening to kill them; I think some are already dead."

"What demands are they making?" I asked.

Nobody seemed to know, nor what steps were being taken to rescue the Israelis. Munich - Germany, even - seemed totally unprepared for this.

I rang Mike Robson, head of the New Zealand Press Association team covering the Games. A few days earlier we had been together celebrating our rowing eight's wonderful victory; now, I asked, was there any way I could get there to help them cover this story?

Not a hope, said Mike. The whole place had been sealed off. But I might be able to cover what happened outside.

The NZPA reporters were perhaps the best-placed of the 4000 or so at the Games to see what was going on. Their accommodation actually overlooked building No 31 in the Olympic Village - the building that had been entered just before dawn, through an unlocked door, by a group of Palestinians carrying Kalashnikovs and grenades.

Some of them had been in the village all night; two even had jobs there.

Others had climbed the 2.5m wire fence. They were spotted by post office engineers, who thought they were party-going, curfew-breaking athletes.

Their attempt to break into the Israeli quarters was frustrated by weightlifter Joseph Romano, who held the door shut while yelling warnings to his team-mates.

He was shot down, as was Moshe Weinberg, killed as he ran from the building. Some - the lucky ones - escaped.

The terrorists - nobody was quite sure of their number - were left with nine hostages.

Their first demand was made soon after 5am - half an hour after the terrorists entered the building. Israel must release 200 Arab prisoners by 9am or the hostages would be shot.

The terrorists also wanted safe passage out of Germany.

None of this was clear to those watching in that Munich hotel, and round the world. Information emerged piecemeal, incoherently and was often wrong.

Nobody seemed to know what was going on. Everybody knew that Israel did not negotiate with terrorists. No deals, no trade-offs, no bowing to blackmail. Only a miracle, it seemed, could save the athletes.

As the afternoon wore on, the deadline kept being extended. I asked to stay on in Munich; my hosts were eager to get as many people out of the way as possible. It was clear that I was going on the flight to Hamburg, if I had to be frog-marched there.

Munich airport had been open and welcoming when I arrived, with hardly a uniform in sight except for fetching Olympic hostesses wearing dirndls in the blue and white of Bavaria.

Now it was full of armed, stone-faced police and soldiers in full combat gear carrying sub-machineguns. Again, people clustered quietly round television screens, waiting for the latest news.

The television was no more informative in Hamburg. Negotiations were continuing, progress was being made, the hostages were still alive. There was a suggestion that hostages and terrorists might be taken by helicopter to an airport for a flight overseas - to Cairo, the terrorists demanded.

But Cairo clearly did not want them; President Anwar Sadat had made himself "not available" to calls from German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who was co-ordinating the international efforts to free the Israelis.

It was later claimed that Germany had indicated to the terrorists, through the head of the Egyptian Olympic team, that it would pay any price for the Israelis' lives.

"Money means nothing to us," a terrorist spokesman is said to have replied. "Our lives mean nothing to us."

I watched the television in Hamburg until well after midnight. It was reported that all the hostages had been saved, after an airport shoot-out.

Next morning, that was proved to be hopelessly, tragically wrong. It still took some time for the truth to emerge.

That Tuesday night, nine Israelis and eight Palestinians had been flown in two helicopters not to the civil airport but to Furstenfeldbruck, a military airbase. A Lufthansa 727 was waiting there - with very little fuel, and with no crew. There was no way it could leave.

Also waiting, on the roof of the control tower, were five police sharp-shooters. They had been ordered to fire as and when they saw fit, but only when at least four terrorists were in sight.

They opened fire when two of the terrorists were returning from inspecting the 727, and two others had got out of the helicopters, holding their crews at gunpoint. Not all four were killed, and there were more in the helicopters.

The police, it seemed, had miscalculated badly, both in the number of terrorists and in the forces needed to put them down. They called for urgent reinforcements, but the die was cast.

It was a shambles, ending with one helicopter in flames after a terrorist had thrown a grenade into it, and all nine hostages dead. The so-called rescue had turned into a disaster.

Later, the Federal Government said that right from the outset it had never intended to allow the hostages to leave German territory without the certainty that they would be safe wherever they landed.

In the days that followed, there was much debate, and much recrimination. Some suggested the Games should be cancelled in tribute to the Israeli martyrs; in the end, they were suspended for a day.

A moving memorial service was held in the main stadium, shown all round the world. I stood with dozens of quietly weeping Germans outside a Hamburg shop window, watching the ceremony on television and overwhelmed by Beethoven's great funeral march.

They were days I will never forget. The world was introduced to the face of terrorism - or rather, the horrific image of the black ski-mask that hid that face. It learned a new name for murder: Black September.