Munich By Steven Spielberg: The 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre

1353 Words6 Pages
“The peaceful celebration was over. Jewish blood had again been spilled in German soil…”(Chaplin). “They’re all gone” announced Jim Mckay. All of the Israeli hostages had been killed. The movie Munich is historically accurate in its portrayal of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, the depiction of the Palestinian terrorist group, and Committee X’s (a secret agent counter-terrorist group) execution of the plan called Operation Wrath of God. The movie Munich highlights the planned assassination of the Jewish athletes in their hotels with authentic scenes of the real life encounter with the Palestinians. In the movie, the members of Black September, the Palestinian terrorists, are portrayed in realistic and historically accurate ways, and…show more content…
One example of how Spielberg accurately portrays the massacre is at the beginning of the movie when the terrorists are shown jumping the fence into the Olympic village dressed as athletes. As Lowitt says, the Palestinian terrorists do in fact jump the fence dressed as athletes, with guns in their gym bags (21). Another example is when the terrorists attack the athletes. At 5am on September 5, 1972, the Israeli Olympic team heard a knock on the door, the wrestling coach cracked the door, and was hit by a hail of bullets through the door (Smith 637). The terrorists proceeded into the room, and took the remaining athletes as hostages. The last example is was when they show the disaster at the airport (Lowitt 6). The German government attempts to put on a rescue mission, but does not have enough men or an effective plan. They do not have as many snipers as there were terrorists, which means they could not snipe all of the terrorists simultaneously. The main reasons for this was money and preparation. They only had two million dollars for Olympic Security, and could not afford much of the well-needed security (Maslin 1). German authorities were well-equipped to deal with unruly men and copious quantities of beer… but were utterly unprepared for a terrorist attack writes Maslin (1). At the end of the mission, all of the hostages were reported dead, after being assumed…show more content…
One example of how Spielberg represented Black september correctly was the names of the members (Klein 165,66,68). All of the terrorist’s names are very important, and in the movie, they get them all right, such as Zwaiter, Hamshari, and Chir. The committee members spend a lot of money buying the names of the terrorist that is next on their list. The movie also clearly explains Black September’s motive. The Palestinians did not just kill the Israelis for fun, they did it for attention. They wanted the 200 Palestinian refugees to be released. As Chaplin says, they wanted the release of the refugees from the Israeli jails and safe houses in Germany (2). Unluckily for the terrorists, they did not get what they wanted, because the Israelis never set the refugees free. Finally, in the movie, the terrorists put the hostages close to and in the planes and helicopters so if the German government intends to kill Black September, the hostages would die along with them. This account in the movie was exactly what happened according to Smith, who said that West German sharpshooters had begun a battle with the terrorists when the terrorists tossed grenades into the helicopter killing the hostages inside (2). The rest of the hostages were killed by Black September during the shootings in the
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