20th Olympic Summer Games

Federal President Gustav Heinemann opens the 20th Olympic Summer Games in Munich in August 1972. According to the wishes of the sponsors, the games are to be fun and harmonious. Athletes from 121 nations join in the competition for medals.

The positive expectations are dashed by dramatic events. Arab terrorists attack the quarters of the Israeli team in the Olympic village. They shoot the Israeli wrestling trainer Moshe Weinberg and the 31-year old weight lifter Joseph Romano and take nine Israeli athletes as hostages. The bloody tragedy ends 20 hours later at the Fürstenfeldbruck air base near Munich. In the course of an attempt by the police to free the hostages all the Israeli athlete-hostages, a police officer, and five terrorists are killed.

A mourning ceremony is conducted in the Olympic stadium. The continuation of the games is endangered. Finally IOC President Brundage declares: "The games go on."

In the Federal elections of November 1972, the social-liberal coalition under Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt emerges victorious. The Brandt/Scheel government announces that it will continue the policy of domestic reforms. The political emphasis is to be on education policy, legal and constitutional policies, co-determination, family policy, and the status of women in society.

Domestic security in the Federal Republic of Germany is heavily threatened by terrorism. Since 1968 a terrorist group, the "Red Army" (Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF) - which sprang from the protest movement of the 1960s - has been attempting to achieve its "social revolutionary" goals through arson attacks against merchants and a series of bombings against police establishments and the American army. In 1972 the police succeed in arresting the leading RAF members (the "Baader-Meinhof Group"). The RAF leadership does not give up the fight against the hated social order of the Federal Republic. It calls for new terrorist actions that will demand great sacrifices in the future.

The state considers itself to stand before a particular challenge from terrorism. In 1972 the Premiers of the Federal Länder agree with the Federal government on the so-called "radical decrees". Political extremists of the left or right are to be denied access to public service. This is to help ensure the free democratic system of the country. The "radical decrees", which are approved by Willy Brandt in the interests of domestic security, are and continue to be heavily disputed in public. Years later the European Court of Human Rights in Straßbourg rules that the "radical decrees" are not in compliance with the European Convention of Human Rights.