Doomed to Fail - Ep 118 - The Olympics Pt 3: Massacre in Munich 1972

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Ok. This is horrible. This week we talk the Olympics from 1950 - 1980. Some fun stuff happens, some records are broken. Mark Spitz wins 7 gold medals in swimming, with a mustache! We really feel like that might have slowed him down.But, the big horrible story is the Massacre at Connollystraße 31 on September 5, 1972. Eleven Israeli athletes were taken hostage by members of "Black September," a Palestinian terrorist group. Two are killed in the Olympic Village and the rest are killed in a gun/grenade battle on an airfield later. They were husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers. Trapped in a constant cycle of revenge that sees no sign of stopping.  Sources:Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/rome-1960-the-olympics-that-changed-the-world_david-maraniss/1025440Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/striking-back-the-1972-munich-olympics-massacre-and-israels-deadly-response_aaron-j-klein/323563/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVzDVsUjRswhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3K9VJ6dhNQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJuiOHrI5whttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Z3FmGLVU0 Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. There we go. We are back up and running my audio. It's probably going to be kind of crappy because I'm in Dallas, but that's the way it goes. Hi, Taylor. How are you?

I'm good. How are you? You're also, like, laying in bed. I can very, very, very, very. relaxed. I know. I just like, what's the point? Why am I going to get up and go sit in an office? I'm just going to be holding the laptop this way instead of on a, on a desk. So, anyways, how's your weekend? Pretty good. I slept all day yesterday. And then today, my family's going to see Planet of the Apes, and I'm jealous, but I couldn't make it because I had to do this. That would have been fun. I know. Happy to be here with you. yeah i'm sure it's so much better than being in the movies um all right well will be intro us

yes yes we decided that you're way better at this than me hi everyone welcome to june to fail we are the podcast that brings you history's most notorious failures and epic disasters twice a week every week i'm taylor joined as always by farce hello farce and i just got bad at farce because wants to talk about the debate and I just don't think that it's over yet and I just don't want to talk about it. It's like all I've talked about for the past like six days with people and I'm just like I can't. It's going to be a bit of a disappointment for you because I'm going to be discussing presidential debates later. Oh perfect. Are you doing Nixon Kennedy? No, no, no. That's like all people talk about this week. No, I'm kind of exaggerating only a little bit. I'm going to be talking about

residential races and you know the way things have worked out i'm going to address one specific campaign um but i'm not going to spoil it because i think you go first this week i do i do and i'm going to continue talking about the olympics um if you log into our instagram as us all of all of our algorithm is just olympics and it's very very fun there's like trials happening right now there's divers, there's videos of like divers, parents crying because they're so excited. There's people breaking records. Everyone's really fit. It's just, it's very exciting. So everyone's in trials right now, getting ready to go to Paris. I bought, well, I had to buy two pairs of new jeans. So I bought new jeans for Old Navy because I'm, I don't know. I still feel

like that is where I buy jeans. And I bought a Team USA sweatshirt. And then I was like, I have too many sweatshirts, but I was like, I would literally never wear one of those Old Navy Fourth of July t-shirts, but I was like, I will 100% wear an Old Navy Team USA sweatshirt for no reason. So that's coming because I'm very Olympic out right now. Is it like 100 degrees where you were? It is, yes. I keep a cold in here, cold and expensive in this house. I don't care.

My friend at work, We have like weekly presentations and sometimes it's about work. It's about like data and the internet or whatever. But then sometimes it's about fun stuff. So I actually did our Able Archer 83 episode on, I did it for my work. I like had a presentation and like did it again. And then my friend Taylor at work, she did one this week about Mothman and other cryptids. And I, to support, I made a tinfoil hat.

So my husband walked by the office and it's like pitch dark. parking here because I keep it really dark and I have like I have my satanic temple candle lit and I'm staring at the computer and I have a tinfoil hat on. So it's a great picture. It really encapsulates what's going on there. Yeah. He said a child family. He was like, I don't, I don't know. We'll just keep this door closed when I want. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a lot. I don't know how I got there. Oh, because it's cold in here. And I bought a sweatshirt. But anyway, let's talk all the Olympics again. And this story is fucking. horrible. So I apologize to literally everyone that I have to tell you this. We talked about the origins of the Olympics. We talked about ancient and the modern. Last week we talked about Hitler's 1936 Olympics and Olympics up to 1950. So today we're going to do Olympics from 1950 to 1980. There's some fun things. There are some bad things and there's a very, very very bad thing and I've been like kind of stuck to my stomach for the past couple days I'm kind of nervous you're kind of setting this up the way I set up the tote family murderers like

it's really fucking honestly the most terrible thing one of those are terrible things I've heard so I watched a bunch of videos I couldn't find like a really like the book that I wanted to read like I wanted a book about this and I couldn't really figure it out I couldn't get vengeance which is the book that the movie Munich was based off of um it didn't come an audiobook and like I don't have time to actually like sit down and read a book up my eyes So I listened to another book, and then a book about the 1960 Olympics, and then a bunch of videos that I will, I'll share in the notes. Oh, my first thing is, okay, this has been an awful week for me. I think this might be why.

I've been, like, depressed and sad all week, and this might very, very well be why. But let's talk about some fun things or other things that happened in the Olympics before we get to Munich in 1972. too. Every Olympics, and I'm sure I'm going to miss some of the highlights, has like really heroic, exciting things. Everything has a political undertone, which we know. I think that like the dream of Pierre Coubertine was like, this will be something that transcends politics, you know, just athletes and the beauty of sport. And it's not that. And it can never be that. It's always going to be something political happening. But a couple fun things. I'm just going to I'm going to list where the Olympics were, and then some ones and things that happened that were fun.

So in the 50s, the Winter Olympics were in Oslo, Norway. And in those games, Emil Zapodic of Czechoslovakia won the gold in the 5,000 meter, 10,000 meter, and the marathon, which has never been repeated before. So he's like a runner, which is cool. Or again, then they were in Finland, then they were in Italy. In 1956, the Summer Olympics were in Melbourne. the equestrian events were in Stockholm, Sweden, which led me to search, how the fuck do the horses

get to Paris? And the answer is very, very fancy planes. And yeah, so for all of the equestrian events, like I think I mentioned this in the first episode on the Olympics, but they're going to be at Versailles, which is like real cool.

So like in front of Versailles in the gardens, they're making the whatever for the horses to like jump and shit. But the horse is get there, you know, through Europe, they can probably take a train, but for everywhere else, they have to take, like, really nice, really fancy airplanes. Once again, showing that many of these Olympic sports are just for the every man to do. I actually also just, like, my husband was sharing me a story of a man who had, like,

taken a little boat across the Pacific. And he was like, oh, he did it. He got there in like 46 days. And I said, that sounds like some rich kid shit. And he said, it looks like his parents are rich. And I was like, yeah, poor people aren't doing that. like that's the guy was like was an interview with him and he was like yeah dude I was like worried and I was like I just hate that rich people shit I probably get like sponsorships I mean

I don't think Greta Thunberg is like a millionaire but like she takes like a private yacht everywhere or sailing yacht or something she doesn't want she wants to do carbon neutral so I think that she just gets sponsored by a bunch of like to sail everywhere groups yeah I love that about her um So anyway, exactly. Equestrian events for the everyday folk. In Melbourne, also, a couple countries had boycotted that due to political reasons. There was a Suez Canal crisis at the Soviet invasion of Hungary. So things were happening in the 50s and 60s, obviously. The 60s is going to be the Cold War. The Winter Olympics in 1960 were in Squaw Valley, United States. In the summer, they were in Rome. So I read a book called 1960 Rome, the 1160 Rome, the 116. Olympics that changed the world. And, like, after I was done reading it, I realized that I read the abridged version. And I was like, did they abridge the world changing out of it?

Because I didn't really see it. Like, I didn't. Out of, changing out of what? Out of the book. Like, I didn't see any world changing in the book. It was just, like, a typical Olympics. But whatever. I read the whole book, and I learned a lot about the 1960 Olympics.

It's not a grandiosity added to, like, this feat of, I don't know, it's probably one of those things. It's fine. Like, yeah. they one thing that is fair the us the uss are they hosted the trials in 1960 and they were calling out the racism in the united states which is absolutely fair because it was you know the 1960s um Cassius clay was there for the first time he's obviously going to become Muhammad Ali and um as all accounts are he was very full of himself and like very excited another fun story is that he screamed the entire flight there because he didn't want to do it and he was scared wait oh you didn't want to fly yeah you don't want to fly um it's a cold war um i'm not going to talk about doping at all i think during this series but one of the big things that happened at the very first day of a 1960 olympics nude k-nud knud you know yensen um he was uh i must have been from sweden and norway he um was competing in the hundred kilometer team trial on his bicycle and he

He passed out and died, and he had traces of amphetamines in his blood. So that was like one of the, they haven't before, but it was like a first like really high profile thing where someone had died and potentially had done it because they were, because they were doping. And I know that like, it's also like, you know, when Lance Armstrong was doing it, they were like getting new blood every day, you know, like really weird, like really weird shit. So that happened in 1960. Ethiopia was there. That was a big deal because they had been invaded by Italy. but they were there in Italy for the for the games and Ethiopian Abebe Bikula won the marathon with no shoes on which is incredible because Rome is very cobbly and he did it again in Tokyo the next year which is super cool or the next time why did Italy invade Ethiopia for land weird you know that or you just saying that resources

probably i don't know weird okay i can look up later um there are the boxing finals where the u.s versus italy and the italians were getting really rowdy and everybody was like kind of mad and bing crosby stood up and sang the star spangled banner to calm everybody down which you totally work and i love that because he has such a beautiful voice so i love that and then also in 1960 there's a lovely story about a track team of a black women called the tiger bells and wilma rudolph was the first American woman to win three gold medals, and she won it in track and field during 1960. So that was really fun. I feel like it was world-changing, but like fun stuff happened in 1960 in Rome. 1964, they were in Tokyo. That was the first in Asia and the first televised via

satellite. So that was the first time you could actually see it, you know, not live, but like near live or like the same day. In 1968, it was in Mexico City of Mexico, where there there were also a bunch of high altitude records were broken because Mexico City is high. It's also, I think it's also a mile high, just like Denver. It is. Yeah, it's one of those things. I watch a lot of, like, like, fighting stuff and anybody who goes to Mexico City when they have an event, like, they always just gas out immediately. And it's like, what just happens?

Like, oh, they're in Mexico City. Oh, it totally makes sense. Yeah. You can talk about how Barack Obama did that shitty debate in Denver. Was the Mitt Romney one? Yes. I should. I should.

So another thing that happened in 1968, the summer was a black power salute. Do you remember that? Yes. Yes. So Tommy Smith and John Carlos, they won the 200 meter. They were gold and bronze. They raised their fist in a black power salute. The other guy who won silver was an Australian named Peter Norman.

he obviously he seems he got it he was like I'm not going to do that because I'm a white guy but they all wore human rights badges he was definitely like in solidarity with them Tammy Smith said later quote we were concerned about the lack of black assistant coaches about how Muhammad Ali got stripped of his title by the lack of access to good housing and our kids not being able to attend the top colleges so you know it was it kind of brought that to the forefront and that was a big deal as well and to the 1970s in 1972 the Inter Olympics were in Sapporo, Japan. In the summer, they were in Munich, which we'll talk about in length in a second. But two other, or one other fun thing that happened in Munich, nope, the only, not other, a fun thing that happened in Munich in 1972

was Marks. Yeah, no. Mark Spitz was the American swimmer. He won seven gold medals, and he set world records with each one. And I just want to note that he had a mustache. Yeah, I know Mark, I actually do know what Mark Spitz looks like.

But like, don't you feel it was funny that he had a mustache? Like, isn't the idea now to be as hairless as possible? He was like, I have to have a mustache. This is like my identifying characteristic and trait. All my powers. What of his power is in the mustache? I think it is in the mustache. I think that maybe that was it.

Maybe it was like pulling him forward somehow. So I thought that was lovely. the 1976 winter olympics were relocated from denver they ended up being in innsbruck austria a couple years before denver was like no no no no no no we can't do this because it was just like too fucking expensive and the people were like stopped doing this so they stopped in austria was like we'll take it um the nineteen seventy six summer olympics were in montreal canada um romanian gymnast nara komenkomenici scored the first perfect ten in olympic and she won three gold medals, which is fun. And this is also where Caitlin Jenner won the gold and the decathlon. No way. And, yes.

And the decathlon is fucking insane. So I read about it a little bit in 1960 book. And just to tell you what the decathlon is, it's a two-day event and it's a point system. So you could have something you're really good at and something that you're not very good at. But on day one, you do the 100 meters, the long jump, the shot put, the high jump, and the 400.

meters. On day two, you do 110 meter hurdles, discus throw, whole vault, javelin throw, and 1,500 meters. It's just like the two most exhausting days you could possibly think of. It kind of reminds me of a field day in elementary school, which is like the funnest day. Yeah, exactly. You do, I don't know, hopefully get popsicles at the end of it. Oh, yeah, we did. Oh, no, I mean the decathletes. I know you did. The last Olympics of like this time period, the 80s,

The 80 Summer Olympics were in Moscow in several countries, including the United States, did not attend, which led the Soviet Union to win most of the medals, which makes sense. So next week, we'll talk about 1984, because there's a lot of stuff with Los Angeles in 1984 that resulted in the way that L.A. is policed. That kind of ties sort of set the stage for like race riots of the 1990s. So we'll talk about that. And then also, Atlanta bombing. So I will, that's where we'll end, I think, next week, because it's a lot. I feel like I'm really. That's a lot. Yeah. I'm overwhelmed by this, by these stories. So, um, let's talk about Munich. And what happened in 19 2017. Is Munich the thing, is the thing you were promising this with? Yes. Okay. This is the bad thing. Um, this is, okay, ultimately, this is a revenge story. This is a story of revenge for all sorts of wrongs and revenge after revenge after

revenge. We have not talked about Israel. It's still happening right now. Exactly. So we have not talked about Israel and Palestine because, like, this is a fun podcast and who cares what we think. It seems to me that anti-terrorism becomes terrorism very, very quickly. And an eye for an eye for a thousand eyes, it's always going to lead to innocent people dying. And that's what this does. Innocent people are going to die all over this story. The families of the murdered athletes in 1972, they wanted the truth. They wanted justice and they wanted help. They wanted to be compensated for their loss. There were huge. Well, are you going to get into what happened though? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm just prefacing like what I want to share about like this. Like they didn't want revenge.

They wanted justice. They wanted to know what happened and they wanted money because like the their, their husbands were having killed and it was a ton of people's fault. And they didn't get any of that. Eventually they would get a little settlement in like the 2004. I think, but they didn't get, like, what they, what they deserved out of this, but they did not want revenge. They were like, that will only lead to more innocent people dying. And it did. So I just wanted to like start with that. Like there was huge errors on behalf of anyone, but this is just like revenge is for revenge and there are absolutely no winners. So the 1970s sounds fucking terrifying. There are so many terror groups around the Middle East and Europe. And And they're, like, very, very active. There's the Red Army from Asia. There's a Baderbeinhof from Germany, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the predecessor to Hamas, the IRA. It's like a fucking scary time.

In the 50s and the 1970s, there was a plane hijacking one every five days. Like, would you, what? Like, there have been zero for many, many years now. Yeah, but that's probably not, like, in the U.S., right? that's probably... But all around Europe. Yeah. So in 1969, there were 86 hijackings.

In 1970, there were 78. So your E.D. Amin story with the hijacking is part of the revenge part of this story that I won't even get into. But like that kind of shit was happening all the time, which is like crazy. So there's like a lot going on, like a lot of tension in Europe and in the Middle East. Like in part of the revenge story, people are going to get shot in like cafes in Italy. you know like there's tons of tons of going on so to preface which is like not at all doing it justice but a lot is going on here yasser arafat is the president of the plo which is a Palestinian

liberation organization he would lead a nationalist party that he founded in 1959 their goal was to destroy Israel they still exist although in 1993 they said their goal was for arab statehood for Palestine. The Prime Minister of Israel was a woman, which I find interesting, named Golda Maier. And in 1970 to 1971, so in like the immediate prelude to the Olympics, there was a Jordanian Civil War that was led by the PLO. And this is a long story, but like Jordan's involved, Gaddafi is there, Egypt's involved, Israel's involved. One day they hijack a Swiss air flight, a TWA flight, and a Pan Am flight, and they bring them all to one air strip and blow them all up. And like, there's a really dramatic thing.

No one was in the planes, but they blew them all up after the hijackings. So just like a while time to be alive. And in September of that year, the worst of it, and that became known as Black September. And a whole bunch of stuff happened during Black September, but just remember those words together, and we'll talk about them in a second. So all that stuff is happening, as always, in the background. but think about Z Germans in 1972. They are like

everything is fucking fine. We are great. Look how fucking nice we are. So the German Olympics in Munich, they called them the Olympics of peace and joy. They were like, do you remember the last Olympics? We do not. No, no. They were like, everything is wonderful. Everything is fine.

So because of that, and then Fars, you'll remember last time that we talked, the, in 1936 in the winter Olympics like everyone wore their like SS uniforms and people were like that's a little much so in the summer they were like trying not to show that they were like SS people

but they were like very clearly the SS you know Of course. Can't really hide that. So in 1972 there is almost zero security the cops and the Olympic security do not have guns they like they have nothing they wear these like powder blue suits

and they're like everything is fine and there's not very many of them. So some people had the assumption that, like, behind the scenes, there was more security and they were just hiding. But that wasn't true. There was really, like, almost no security at the Olympics. It literally just dawned on me that this is Germany, like, 30 years after. It's so not that long ago.

So not that longer. From it, exactly. So, yeah, it's 1972. too. Like, I mean, they're like barely repairing, you know? It's just like, not even 30 years ago. It's like 23, four years ago or something. So there's like, everything's fine. Um, so they are, that is, you know, that's the mood in Germany. Um, is that they are, okay. So it's 36 years. It's in 36 years since 1336. I just said the math. Because I just think, like, that doesn't sound right. I'm going to have to send this out. So, um, They're like, everything's fine. We're fine. Every country did have their own, like, security team that would go beforehand and be like, everything seems fine.

The Israeli security, they seem to be more worried about the security of their press than the athletes themselves. And they seemed not concerned either. One of the coaches did go early, and he said, this is not safe for our athletes. The Israeli team, the women were somewhere else, but the men's team was in an apartment. on 31 Connolly Strassah. They were in apartments one through five in the Olympic Village. So they had five apartments.

They were all first floor apartments, but they were two-story apartments. And they housed some wrestlers, some fencers, and a lot of coaches as well. So one thing that was, if you look this up, you're going to see pictures of someone looking over a balcony. And that was confusing to me for a second

because the first thing you also see is that it was a first floor apartment, which seems very, very unsafe. But there were two-story apartments. Yeah. I was confused about that. Yeah, that is a scary picture. Of the guy with a mask on?

It looks like the strangers. I know. I'll tell you what he was doing in a second. You'll be like, Jesus fucking Christ. That's what you'll say when we get there. So there was no security, like I said. And the door to this part of the apartment block was always left open because it also led to the apartment garage.

I'm sorry, the car garage, the parking garage. So you would, you could always get in. Like, you'd always get up to the door of the, of the apartment. So this is terrible. It is a long operation to get the people from the PLO who are a group called Black September. That's the name that this specific terrorist cell gives themselves as Black September in relation to the war that had happened the year before. They had spent some time like faking passports and getting into the country.

At one point, in one of the airports in Germany, there was a couple and they had five bags. And they got pulled over by security and security was like, what's in your bags? Open them. And they were like, no, we don't want to, whatever. And then they opened up the, he's like, which bag do you want to open? And then the guy pointed to one, opened it up. And it was full of lingerie, you know. So the Germans were like,

kind of embarrassed and they closed it and they're like, fine, you can go. The other four suitcases were full of AK-47s. So like, they just were shit lucky that they, those weren't the ones that they saw. And that's like, and they took the four suitcases, put them in lockers in the train station in Munich and then they like went on to the next person. So it was like one thing after a thing to get the guns to get the people there and it all culminated on September 4th, 1972. So the athletes, who I will tell you all of their names, they were out in Munich seeing fiddler on the roof, which is fun.

They went to a show. They saw a very famous person who played the lead role. It was a mix of athletes and coaches. One of the doctors, that was a team doctor, his 13-year-old son, had asked to stay in the Olympic Village with the athletes. and he said no and the sun was really mad and he didn't stay there which is like obviously saved his life but it's really just like a gross side story you know yeah um so at 4 30 a m eight members of black september scaled the fence but there's only six feet high and got can i pause how do they know were they trying to still i saw the movie munich but i saw it like i was in college i remember all Only that Steven Spielberg corrected it. Yes. And Eric Banna was in it.

They knew who they were going after. They wanted to go after the Israelis. So that was a point. And they knew they were there. Yes. They had spent a lot of time, like, sneaking around. They didn't really have to sneak around. They could just kind of walk in and see.

And they knew exactly where they were saying. They had a set of copied keys to the room. They were like ready. They were dressed in tracksuits and they had all of their stuff, like their weapons. So they specifically wanted to target the Israelis. and I'll tell you what they wanted, what their demands were. But they scaled the thing. Two drunk Canadians helped them.

It's like, isn't their fault. They were, like, helping them get over it because it was, like, just imagined that everybody couldn't get it. And it was 4.30 in the morning. They had stolen keys, and they opened the door. So one of the, um, a wrestling referee named Yosef Gute Freund, he heard a noise. And you might remember this from the movie. He, because it was like one of the clips that I saw, I just couldn't watch it because I'm just so upset. but he heard the noise, went to the door, saw them opening it, saw men behind the door wearing

like ski masks and threw his body against the door to try to stop them coming in. Gutfreund was 300 pounds, like a really big guide. He was tried his best to keep them out. He, doing that a lot of enough time for his roommate, weight coach, Tuvia Skokovsky to escape through a window. So he went running out to start to try to tell people what was going on and tried to I think he ended up at a hotel calling people and tried to figure out what to do. But there was no security patrol that could have helped him. There was like no one there that should have been there.

Coach Moisha Weinberg fought them. As soon as they got in, he started fighting the terrorists. They shot him in the cheek and he lived from that shot. It was a terrible, obviously, like, went through his face. And then he did a very brave thing that like makes me want to cry. The terrorists asked him where the next group of Israeli athletes were. And he said, because they were in apartment one. And he said, they're not an apartment two.

They're in apartment three. And he walked them past apartment two to apartment three. Because Department three was where the bigger guys were. That's where the wrestlers and the weight lifters were. So they think that that's his thought was like, hopefully these guys can stop them, which is like, I don't know, it just gives me the trouble and makes you want to die. He got shot in the face with an AK-47? Yeah, or some sort of gun.

Probably not. Yeah, his head would have exploded it, but. Yeah. Because he was able to do that and kind of like, at least the big guys in apartment three, they were startled awake so they weren't really ready to, like, help. It was very confusing. The last guy to escape was weight coach, Tuvia Skokovsky. Wait, he escaped.

Wait, one more person escaped. Gad Tosabari, a wrestler. He actually, he got to escape as well. So two guys escapes. He was the last person to escape. Weinberg is going to be shot and killed almost immediately after this, after they gather everybody together in an apartment. And I think that this is the body that they show, like the press and show people to be like,

we're serious about this. Like, we're actually killing people in here. Weinberg's son, Guri, plays him in the movie, Munich. Oh, wow. he was born on August 1st 1972 so he never met his father his father died when he was a month old that's crazy isn't that crazy

it's sad it's so sad I don't know what to do another person that was killed in the apartment's weightlifter Yosef Romano was so cute he's just like cute he's big he's like curly hair on these big fun 70s mutton chops

and he had three little girls and he was killed trying to to fight. He was on crutches because he had just hurt like a ligament in his legament in his day during one of his last weight listening competitions. They tried to fight. He ended up being his body was mutilated. He was castrated and his body was like put at the feet of everybody else and they had to sit next to his body dead body all day long. So the people that were there, the terrorists, I think they were eight or nine of them. Some of them, the guy who was in charge, his name was Lutif Afith, but they called him Issa.

So the names are Issa, Tony, Paolo, Sala, and Abu Hala. Those are their, like, fake names that they used. So you saw they wore, like, a lot of, like, ski masks and face masks so that people couldn't see who they were. They were kind of stand outside on the balcony with their guns and, like, knew that they were there. And they were trying to negotiate with the German police. What they wanted was the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners, as well as some Red Army prisoners from different jails around the world. this was going to be something that was like really hard to do they were in a bunch of different places you know it's like air force one yeah they wanted something that was like nearly

impossible um they said the first deadline was like 9 a.m but that was impossible and they kept moving it and moving it and they ended up being there kind of all day long um the germans fucked up so hard during this entire thing um even though this was a huge idea huge deal They didn't get the federal German government to help. Bavaria didn't necessarily have to do that based on the rules. So they used the Bavarian government and law enforcement to negotiate. But nobody was really a hostage negotiation person. Like they didn't have anyone who was actually qualified to be doing these things.

One thing that they do, and so the picture that you see on the cover of the book one day in September and the one that you just looked up with the person on the balcony with the guy, in the track suit with the mask that his gun on the balcony looking up was because the freaking Germans on in the afternoon, they had an operation called Operation Sunshine, which was to have snipers at different places all around the like around the apartment to try to shoot them. But this is literally being broadcast live across the world and they had TV in the apartment. So what that guy is looking at is he's looking at the balcony being like, are you guys fucking kidding me. I know there's a sniper

up there. I can see him on TV. That's the guy in the or whatever it is. Yeah. The mask. Yeah. He's saying like, I know they're there. I can see them on TV. Like they didn't turn the TV off for any reason. So like they knew that like a total blumber, blumber butt

didn't work at all. They try to sneak cops in with the food, but they're like, no, we're not going to let you do that. Obviously I'm going to have you like drop the food and then we're going to bring it in. Like they're not going to like do a thing. For some reason, Walter Troger, who's the mayor of the Olympic Village, got to go in the apartment and see the hostages. And he was like, are you guys okay? And he was like, they seemed very resigned to their fate. And I'm like, help them.

Like, what is happening? You know what I mean? Like, help them. What's that guy supposed to do? I don't know. Like, why was he even like allowed in there? It was just such a weird thing to have happen. And meanwhile, the Olympics are going on.

There will be a 36-hour break. but eventually Avery Brendidge, who is the president of the IOC, asks them to continue, which I feel like makes sense. I don't agree with that. I think like,

it's a big deal. Like, there's athletes. Like, can't, I mean. I know, everyone else is already there. I mean, obviously, like, the rest of Israelis went home, but like, I don't know.

But, but I think even worse than that, it's like, while it's happening, you can see in, like, the news reports that, like, 200 yards away, there's a,

like a green area with like a fake pond where athletes are like playing ping pong and sunbeating you know like life is going on even in the Olympic village while this is happening which is pretty wild yeah so the Germans do things like we're going to get them a helicopter they were like fine we want to be taken to an airfield to be taken to an Arab country to continue these negotiations you know and the Germans were like that's fine you can definitely do that that sounds great so they wanted at first to get them there through the parking garage that was below, but then the guys were like, obviously you're going to try to shoot us in this parking garage. So they like ended up getting on a bus and going to a smaller airfield that had helicopters and taking those helicopters to a larger airfield. The helicopters didn't have to go very far, but they made them, they were full of gas. They filled them up with gasoline. They didn't have to do that, but they did. So they were like very flammable, keep that in mind. So there's four hostages now left alive. They're on each of the different helicopters.

They are taken to, it's 10 p.m. So it's dark. They're taken to the first in the field book air base. It's a NATO air base. They're taken there in helicopters. When they get there, the Germans have a 747 that's ready to take them like wherever they want to go. 747 has cops dressed like flight attendants, but it's like very clear at their cops. Like they don't even change their pants.

they just put on like a flint in the jacket and like try to do it. And in the middle of it, they give up. Nothing even happens, but the cops in the plane quit and like leave. So at the time the terrorists get there, Issa, the main terrorist gets there and he goes into the plane and he's like, this plane is empty. Like this is weird. We can tell that you all are lying to us. They also had snipers that were obviously like around the airbase, but none of them

were actually snipers. they were guys who like maybe knew how to shoot a gun but none of them were trained none of them were snipers didn't know the thing to like coordinate with each other like there was like nothing they were never ever going to shoot these guys so now that now that they know that they're duped it's chaos everyone starts shooting so the terrorists are shooting the um germans are shooting and they end up throwing a grenade into one of the helicopters blowing up half of the hostages and the other half, Issa, the main terrorist guy, goes in and shoots them all, point blank really close and kills them all with like

the Akey 47 and they all die in the helicopter. So all of the hostages died. Just to go through kind of kind of who they are again and everyone who died in this, the, during the initial break-in, Moitia Weinberg and Yosef Romano, they were both killed. Later, killed by a grenade in the helicopter. They were seated from left to right.

Zav Friedman, David Berger, Yakoff Springer, and Elizair Hofflin. David Berger was actually an American, but he was competing as a weightlifter for the Israeli team. He was so young. He died of smoke inhalation. He didn't even die in the grenade blast. The next day, President Nixon called his parents and said, what can I do for you? And they said, can you bring him home? And his body was flown to America and everybody else was flown back to Israel.

Which is so sad. The people who were shot on the other helicopter seated from left to right, Yosef Goodfriend, Tihat Shore, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Amitzer, Sir Shapira. They were a wrestling, a shooting coach, a wrestler, a fencing coach, and a track coach. During the gunfight, a West German police officer named Anton Fleggerbauer was. killed. And then five of the terrorists were killed in that, in the fight at the Air Force Base, like in all of the chaos of the Air Force Base Base, including Issa, who was the leader. Andre Spitzer's wife, he's a fencing coach. She is dope as shit. She's in one of the documentaries I watched. And she, you know, speaks like seven languages, is like wildly smart, wildly on all

of this. And she's the one who's going to fight for the families to have, you know, any sort of justice to get to know anything that actually happened. They don't tell them anything. And the saddest thing, I think, that happened is, I mean, one of the saddest things ever is that they were live on ABC and they had said that everyone was okay, that they had gotten all of the remaining hostages out at the airfield. And that was the last thing they said before they ended broadcast for the night, like the night before. So they said that. So they said that, and some of the people celebrated. Like the families across Israel and across the world were celebrating that the hostages

had been let go. And some of the wives were like, I will believe it when I hear his voice. He will call me as soon as he's okay. Like that will be the first thing that he does. I know he will call me. And then in the morning, Jim McKay on ABC, he, I don't know why this has upset me so much this week. I don't even know what to do. But in the morning when they found out that everybody had died, Jim McKay on

ABC said, when I was a kid, my father used to say, our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They've now said there were 11 hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning. Nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone. And that's how the world found out, found out that they had all died. Right away, Israel wants to avenge them. And like I said, the families don't want that. They want compensation for the shit job everybody did. keeping them safe. They want to know what happened and they want justice. They want to know what happened in the last hours of the lives of these guys. And they will fight for decades

for this. Mrs. Spitzer will end up. A, like, the Bavarian government tells her that they have no information about this, that they don't know anything that happened. And she will have, like, some person calls her like an informant says this information is in the archives in Munich and then so she's like on the news talking to someone about it someone's saying that it's not true we don't have it she starts reading them some of the documentation that like she got sent by this person and they're like fine we have it and they had like 50 boxes of stuff that was just like talking about what had happened that was all she wanted to know you know like what had happened um and then you know in the aftermath of all of this um some of the

terrorists are still in jail in Germany for a few months. They end up being taken back to Palestine because there's a hijacked Luftanz of flight and they want to trade the the three terrorists are in jail in Germany for

the Luftans of flight. The Luftans of flight only has 12 people on it and they're all dudes, which is like very suspicious and doesn't make any sense. So it's pretty clear that Germany was like, we don't want to deal with this anymore. Get them the fuck out of here. you know so so they they weren't arrested they were they were arrested okay yeah they were in jail in

germany like one of them ran away they found him like 40 minutes later some of them the rest of them were taken into custody they're being extradited they're being they're being they're only one of them extradited to get this whole mess out of their hands yeah and they did it through this like ruse of this like fake hijacking you know they like had to do it you know and i like traded loop on the plane for that so they went back um eventually those um The thing to avenge these deaths is called Operation Wrath of God by the Israeli government. And they will go all over Europe. They will kill people who they think were like tendentially involved.

They kill historians and professors who talk about this in ways that they don't like. They kill at one point a thing called the Lilleyhammer affair. They go to Lilleyhammer Norway, which is like a really small town. And they think that they found one of the guys who's involved. they follow him around they find that he is he works at like this small shop he has a pregnant wife and him and his wife seem totally normal they go to the movies one night they take the bus home they're holding hands she's very pregnant and someone jumps out of a car and kills him shoots him in the head and he was totally the wrong person he wasn't even the guy at all

and like so many things would have been like that guy was married and had kids like why would he all also have this like pregnant life there why wouldn't he have any security like all these things there are people who are like who know that their targets and they will like you know move every day and like try to do all these things and one of the ways that they that they kill people and they did several people in the book that I read um they would put a bomb on their telephone in their apartment they go to their apartment break in put a bomb on their phone and then call them they had a weird time when they knew they were home so they'd pick up the phone and go hello and they would know that they were there

and then they blow up their phone and kill them. Oh. Which is wilds. So a lot of like car bombs, a lot of being like mafia style shot in restaurants, shot on the street. Many, many people will die for this. And I think that's the end of that,

which is, I mean, I think there's like a lot more to the operation of wrath of God and like the justice and all of that. But man, it's just a tragedy of so many levels it shows like how we get to where we are and why you know i was it was um i was talking to someone like a strategist in politics um and someone was like in the weeds on this stuff and like listen like the reality is this never gets off you can't you can't unwind the tape that's already there it's just way too much water under that bridge for it to ever get unraveled. And I don't, yeah. And the thing is,

like, how far back do you go to identify who was right and who was wrong? Yeah. Like, do you punish the people, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, their great-grandparents, do you punish the Allied forces? Do you punish, like, Germany still? I mean, what do you, there's no, answer. Yeah. I don't know. It's such a long story. It's just such a fucking sad,

sad story. Those poor men, they were just had to sit there all day, you know, knowing that they were going to die, knowing that no one was going to help them. This guy, Yosef Romano, the weightlifter,

his mom and brother apparently committed suicide after this. Ugh, so sad. This is such a horrible. a horrible way to die and a horrible, you know, I think, I guess as we'll see in, like, other stories, like, even though it wasn't a safe space in many ways, because, like, it was the 70s and there were no, there was no security and all these things, like, it was supposed to be a safe space, you know? It felt like a safe space.

So there's a thing around how citizens, like, when average people are being punished for their government's actions, you know, it kind of touches on some things that we talk about right now and though, it's like, the people aren't the government. Like, Iranians aren't like, like, you talk to the average Iranian, they don't agree with any of the stuff that goes on in Iran, but they can't vocalize that. They can't say that. All they can look at is, again, who do you punish? It was their great-grandparents who ended up getting these people into office, right? And so how do you punish the kids of that? So I don't know. Touchy, touch your all on the subject.

But I'm glad you covered it because it's, again, I saw the movie, but I saw it so long ago, but I didn't really recall all the nuances. I forgot about the helicopter situation. Yeah. There's a lot to it. there's also this just reminded me like really

quickly and I'm reading this um so in did you have watched dairy girls it's like with it's a it's on Netflix it's like a show about these

um sweet girls in in dairy in Northern Ireland and they talk about a lot of Northern Ireland it's during the time when like the um all of like the there's tons of terrorism in north ireland and all these like terrible things were happening and they're catholic and then there's like the protestants and all these

things but at the very very end they do a vote to decide to like move on essentially and it's like in the show they show it's like there's people that they know that we're like in jail for being IRA terrorists and they're going to like be forgiven because they want the country needs to move on you know and it was like 71% of the people people people people people voted, and they chose to move on. They're like, we need to get past this, you know? I don't know if that, like, worked, but it's like, that reminded me of that you saying that. I think that until we get to the point where, I mean, we can probably get there if we get to the point where we have to be governed by AI.

And AI is making our decisions. Honestly, I was thinking, like, the best thing would be aliens, maybe, but I don't even know if we could agree to fight an aliens. together. Maybe the nuclear war, when we see each other again in 10,000 years, when we can communicate across the world, we can be like, let's forget about it. This is a lot about our psyche that when you said aliens, my first thought was, I guess if like really smart beings landed here, we quite listen to them, and they probably tell us to stop fighting. And your mind went to, how do we kill them? No, no, no, no, no, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking, well, yes, I guess we're right. like we'd work together.

Because they'd probably try to kill us because we're stupid. Like if I had a planet full of idiots, I'd be like, you guys are idiots. Yeah, yeah. And that's what this planet is full of. So, yeah. It's just, I'm going to do something fun after this is over. Like, I'm so excited for the Olympics and like I love all the sport stuff. But I'm just like, we can't have nice things, can we?

You piece of the shit. It makes you feel like that. My episode is actually. pretty fun, but given that you started this conversation by saying you don't want to hear anything about presidential debates, I don't actually think you're going to have fun. I think you're actually going to hate this episode. Let me a break. I have a messenger degree in political communication. The only thing we talk about is presidential debates. So I'm ready. Tell me what color tie Bill Clinton was wearing in 1992. I would love to hear that. Yeah. I don't know.

I'm sure it was blue. We'll get into it. So we'll leave on the more upbeat. I guess. Yeah, this is sad. It's a devastating story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully this Olympics will be eventless. I know, I hope so, too.

I mean, knock on wood, just, like, have people just fucking run and do a great job and squirrel and shit and there's a lot of videos of Simone Biles in slow motion, and I still can't figure out what the fuck she's doing in the air. It's so amazing. Is she competing this? year? I thought you retired. No, no, she's in it. Yeah. She's a little super good. Yeah. Yeah, we, I have a, have a listener mail. Okay. From Morgan. A bushel and a peck is from the musical Guys and Dolls, which I didn't know. But we talked about that song. Yep.

Is that the mail? Yeah, because I told you I sing that song and you were like, I don't know what you're talking about. Do you remember that? No. You said the British measure thing in bushels and And I said, I sing the song. Oh, that's right. That's right. You did. And you were like, that sounds insane. And Morgan was like, that's from guys and dolls.

So her grandma was saying it to her too. So I didn't make that up. The correlation is that you are into, you actually know musicals in place enough to have internalize some of the dialogue, but not the musical itself. And I just don't know many of it. Cool. Well, thank you, Fars. Thank you, friends for listening.

Please continue to tell your friends about us. we our website is up and running you can go there doomed to failpod.com to sign up for our newsletter to our merch to see all of our episodes and different places to listen learn a little bit about us on there as well and then if you have any questions or suggestions we're at doom to fail pod at gmail.com and we also had someone ask if we ever have a call out to ask people about their own doomed to fail stories so please tell us if you have a doomed to fail thing that happened like maybe in your family like a weird thing that happened to like get to you all to where you are We'd love to know.

This all started with the, we were going to cover some of this, then we're going to ask people to call in with their own relationship doomed to fail, like when they started dating someone who was red flaggy. What did I think of that never vocalized it to you? I don't know. We had a lot of ideas. We have a lot of ideas. We're very smart people.

I am going to go get a drink before you go and hope for a much less horrifying week this week than I had last week. It's me good. Okay. We'll go ahead and cut it off. Yeah.