Doomed to Fail - Re-Release: Terror in Munich - Olympics 1972

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Part 3 of our Olympics Episodes is here for re-release! We're back in Germany (well, West Germany now) for the 1972 Summer Olympics. A team from Israel is held hostage by the Palestinian group "Black September." It ended in deaths, heartbreak, and a forever changed Global Stage. 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] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask 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 know. You're very relaxed. I know. 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 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. Womp, womp, wow. That would have been fun.

I know, happy to be here with you. Yeah, I'm sure. It's so much better than. Speaking of the movies. All right. Well, will be intro to us? Yes.

Yes. We decided that you're way better at this than me. Hi, everyone. Welcome to James DeFail. 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 Fars. Hello, Fars. And I just got bad at Fars because he 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'm talking 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 I'm like all people talk about this week no I'm kind of exaggerating only a little bit um I'm going to be talking about presidential 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. If you log into our Instagram as us, 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 in 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 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 had a presentation and like did it, 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, it's dark in 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 in this office. He said to my family. He was like, I don't, I don't know. Let's 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 to 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 is a very, very, very bad thing. And I've been like kind of sick 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 Pote family murderers. It's really fucking honestly the most terrible thing.

one of those are terrible things of a word 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 of my eyes so i listened to another book um and then a book about the 1960 olympics and then a bunch of videos that i will i'll share in the notes um 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 may 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. Every Olympics or 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, the dream of Pierre Cupertine.

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 of fun things. 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 Zipodik 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 and shit. But the horses 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 like 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 you 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? Yeah. I love that about her. So anyway, exactly. Aquest union 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. And in the summer, they were in Rome. So I read a book called 1960 Rome, the 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. 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, they, one thing that is fair, the USSR, 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.

Cassius Clay was there for the first time. He's obviously going to become Muhammad Ali. And 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. Oh, you didn't want to fly. Yeah, you don't want to fly. It's the Cold War. 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 the 1960 Olympics, Knude, K-N-U-D, Knude, you know, Jensen, he was, I must have been from Sweden and Norway. He was competing in the 100-kilometer team trial on his bicycle, and he passed out and died, and he had traces of epamin's 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 Abibu 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 can Italy invade Ethiopia for?

Land. Weird. You know that, or you're just saying that? Resources, probably. I don't know. Weird, okay. I can look up later. There are the boxing finals where the U.S. versus Italy

and the Italians were getting really rowdy, and everybody was kind of mad. And Bing Crosby, stood up and sang the star spangled banner to calm everybody down, which would 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 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 it 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, Mexico where 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. Did you tell me that? Yeah, it's one of those things that. a lot of 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 yeah um you can talk about how Barack Obama did that shitty debate in Denver was the

bin Romney one yes I should um 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 was, 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 in solidarity with them. Tommy Smith said later, quote, we were concerned about the lack of black assistant coaches, about how Muhammad Ali got stripped of title, 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 Winter 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.

Nice for February. 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 Spitz. 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? If I go to 1-8. And he was like, I have to have a mustache. It's 70s. 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. 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. I was like, we'll take it. The 1976 Summer Olympics were in Montreal, Canada. Romanian gymnast, Nadia Komensi, scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics.

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. 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 like something you're really good at and something that you're not very good at. But you, on the 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 the old day in elementary school, which is like the funnest day ever. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Hopefully you 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 80s 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. Yeah, makes sense. So next week, we'll talk about it. about 1984 because there's a lot of stuff with Los Angeles in 1984 that resulted in the way that L.A. is police. 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 the 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. I'm overwhelmed by this, by these stories. So let's talk about Munich. And what happened in 1970s. Is Munich the thing? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it?

Is you any of the thing you were prophesying this with? Yes. Okay. This is the bad thing. 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. Okay.

I'm just prefacing like what I want to share about like this. 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 had been 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 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 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 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 are, there have been zero for many, many years now. Yeah, but that's probably not like in the U.S., right? No, 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, like, revenge part of this story that I won't even get into.

but like that kind of shit was happening all the time um which is like crazy so there's like a lot going on like a lot of tension in europe and in 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 erifat is the president of the plo which is a palestidian 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, 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 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 wild 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, 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, 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. Yeah, of course. Can't really hide that. Hide that. So in 1972, there is almost zero security. The cops and the Olympic security do not have guns. 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 have 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. 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.

So they are, that is, you know, that's the mood in Germany is that they are, okay. So it's 36 years. It's in 36 years. I just did the math because I think that doesn't sound right. I'm going to have to sell this out. So they're like, everything's fine. We're fine. Every country did have their own security team that would go beforehand.

I'd 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 Strasser. 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 I also, because the first thing you also see is that It was a first floor apartment, which seems very, very unsafe But they were two-story apartments. Yeah, that's why. I was confused with that. Yeah, that is a scary picture. Of the guy with a mask gun.

It looks like the strangers. I know. I'll tell you what he was doing in a second. You'll be like, Jesus 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 or 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 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 were 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 then 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, too, 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 like 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 son 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. So at 4.30 a.m., eight members of Black September scaled the third. fence, but there's only six feet high. And got... Can I pause?

How do they know? Were they trying to... I saw the movie Munich, but I saw it like, I was in college. I remember 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 like 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 and what their demands were. But they scaled the thing. Two drunk Canadians helped them. Like isn't their fault. They were like helping them get over it because it's like just imagined that everybody

couldn't get in. It was 4.30 in the morning. They had stolen keys and they opened the door. So one of the, a wrestling referee named Yosef Gute Freund, he heard a noise. And you might remember this from the movie. He, because of 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, wait 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 about a hotel calling people, tried to figure out like what to do.

But there was no like security patrol that could have helped him. There's 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 terrorist 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 in apartment two. They're in apartment three. And he walked them past apartment two to apartment three. because Department 3 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, just gives me the chill as it 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 at that. Yeah. Because he was able to do that and kind of like, at least the big guys in Department of, 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 Skukovsky. 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 and these big fun 70s mutton chops. And he had three little girls. And he was killed trying to fight. He was on crutches because he had just hurt like a ligament in his legament in his legion during one of his like last weightlifting competitions. But he 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 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, Salah, and Abu Hala. Those were 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. were they would kind of stand outside on the balcony with their guns and they 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. It's like Air Force One.

Yeah. They wanted something that was like nearly impossible. 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. The Germans fucked up so hard during this entire thing. Even though this was a 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. 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 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, the hoodie 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 for any reason so like they knew so that was 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 like 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's what I mean like 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 have happen and meanwhile the Olympics are 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 you know like I don't I don't I don't agree with that. I think like this is 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 the Israelis went home, but like, I don't know. But, but I think even worse than that is like while it's happening, you can see in like a 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 sunbathing. 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 it 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 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-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 flight attendant 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, 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. It 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 they know that they're duped, it's chaos. Everyone starts shooting. So the terrorists are shooting, the 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 Akeye 4th.

and they all die in the helicopter. So all of the hostages died. Just to go through kind of who they are again and everyone who died in this, during the initial break-in, Moistow Weinberg and Yosef Romano,

they were both killed. Later, killed by a grenade in the helicopter. They were seated from left to right. Zavreedman, David Berger, Yakoff Springer, and as our hoflin. 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, Joseph Gutefriend, Pai Hatshore, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Amitzer, Amitzer, Amit 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 Figueroa was killed, and then five of the terrorists were killed in the fight at the Air Force Base, like in all of the chaos of the Air Force Base.

Including Issa, who was the leader. Andrei 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,

all of the remaining hostages out at the airfield. And that was the last thing they said before they ended broadcasts for the night, like the night before. 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, giving 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. 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. And then, you know, in the aftermath of all of this, 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 Luftans of flight and they want to trade the three terrorists or in jail. in Germany for the Lufthansa flight. But the Lufthansa 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 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 were. They were being extra. They, Germany wanted 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 Lufth on the plane for that. So they went back.

Eventually, though, 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 Lillehammer 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 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 all these things. And one of the ways that they, that they kill people and they did it several people in the book that I read, they would put a bomb on their telephone in their apartment. They'd 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 the phone and kill them. Which is wild. So a lot of, like, car bombs, a lot of being, like, mafia style shot in restaurants, shot on the street. Many, many, many people will, will die for this. And I think, I think that's the end of that, which is, I mean, I think there's like a lot more to the operation and 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, I was talking to someone like a strategist in politics.

And someone was like in the weeds on this stuff. And like, listen, like the reality is this is never gets off. You can't you can't unwind. the tape that's already there. It gives you just way too much water under that bridge for 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 is still? I mean, 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. And... Yosef Romano, the weightlifter, his mom and brother apparently committed suicide after this. So sad

It's just such a horrible A horrible way to die And a horrible You know I think I guess as we'll see And 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 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 these people into office, right? And so how do you punish the kids of that? So I don't know. Touchy, touch you 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 that 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. 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, sweet girls in, in Derry, Northern Ireland, and they talk about a lot of Northern Ireland, it's during the time when, like, the, all of, like, the, there's tons of terrorism in Northern 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 that like, there's people that they know that were 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 voted and they chose to 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. 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.

earth. 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. It says a lot about our psyche that when you said aliens, my first thought was, I guess if like really smart beings landed here, we'd probably listen to them and they probably tell us 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 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, 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 sports 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 to eat this episode. Let me break. I have a master's degree in political communication, but 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 note, I guess. Yeah, this is sad. It's a devastating story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully I have some listening to a mail.

I know, I hope so too. I mean, knock on wood, just like, have people just fucking run and do a great job and twirl 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 she was tired. No, no, she's in it.

Yeah. She's a little super good. Yeah. Yeah, I have a listener mail. Okay. From Morgan. Okay. 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 male? Yeah. Because I told you I sang 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 things in bushels and pecks.

And I said, I sing the song. Oh, that's right. That's right. You did. You did. Kisses on the neck to my kids all the time. And you were like, that sounds insane. And Morgan was like, that's from guys and dolls.

So her grandma is 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 internalized 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. Our website is up and running. You can go there, doomed to failpod.com to sign up for our newsletter to our march 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 a we were going to cover some of this and 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've 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 have. last week. We go ahead and cut us off.