centralized rule. But there would be no organic evolution from the totalitarian remains of what Lenin and Stalin had built. If the system were to give way, it would have to crack. The political consequences of this posture, and its effects on civil liberties and human rights, were obvious. The security implications were worrisome. One day, when the communist systems came under strain, or when they shattered, their huge storehouses of weapons might slip from state control to markets, where appetites for the arms were growing.
Eastern bloc infantry rifles had come to the Middle East in large numbers in the mid-1950s. The first large shipment to be widely recorded—the Kremlin-negotiated deal via Czechoslovakia to Nasser’s Egypt in 1955— apparently did not involve AK-47s. Czech rifles were shipped. But not long after these transfers, Soviet AK-47s began to flow to the Egyptian army, as did M1943 ammunition and the technology to produce both the weapons and the cartridges. By the late 1950s, American technical intelligence officials were secretly testing Egyptian- manufactured 7.62x39-millimeter cartridges—a sign that a Middle Eastern version of the ammunition was already in significant circulation.12 By the early 1960s, Egyptian soldiers were carrying an Egyptian-made AK-47 knock-off—the Misr, the first of many Kalashnikovs to be cloned in the Middle East. Soon the Kremlin’s engagement with Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya resulted in their militaries’ adopting the Kalashnikov line. The timing was portentous. Unlike many military items the Soviet Union provided its customers in the region, small arms could be easily transferred to third parties, who could easily master their use. And the rush of Soviet infantry weapons into the region aligned with the rise of Palestinian nationalist groups, many of which engaged in campaigns of terrorism against Israel and its citizens.
Middle Eastern terrorism had been nurtured with state sponsorship. Soon after Israel declared independence in May 1948, Egypt’s King Farouk I had organized unconventional fighters against the Jewish state. The fighters called themselves
In the evolution of war, processes that develop in parallel—political, technological, or tactical—can suddenly cross, and at these points of intersection wars change. In the crucible of the Middle East in the 1960s, this was the case. The Palestinian groups that chose militancy soon procured the newly available rifles that the Eastern bloc had shipped to its Middle Eastern clients. The AK-47 and the AKM became standard arms for unconventional war. They were studied in militant training camps and carried on guerrilla and terrorist missions that entered the groups’ tactical routine. Assault rifles, those lightweight instruments for concentrating firepower, multiplied the menace of individual insurgents and terrorists, elevating the danger they posed and the ambitions they voiced. The weapons’ utility was not lost on the groups’ leaders. Khalil al-Wazir, a commander who eventually led Fatah’s armed war under the nom de guerre of Abu Jihad, embraced the AK-47 as a vehicle to victory. “The Kalashnikov is our only language until we free all of Palestine,” he said.13 From the fedayeen camps in the Middle East, the weapon, and the mentality for turning its barrel toward civilians, spread outward. Eventually a flight from Libya in 1972 carried six of the rifles to Munich.
By 4:30 A.M., the Black September cell members, assault rifles in hand, were trying to open the door to Apartment 1 at 33 Connollystrasse, where Israeli coaches and athletic officials were resting. One of the Israelis, Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee, heard the noise. He opened the door and came face-to-face with the attackers. Gutfreund slammed the door, leaning into it and shouting to the other Israelis, calling them from their sleep. But the Palestinians had been quick. In the instant the door had been ajar, two of them inserted their assault-rifle barrels past the jamb, preventing Gutfreund from closing the door fully. They began to pry. Gutfreund was a huge man. He pushed back as long as he was able. For several long seconds he kept them out. His efforts saved a man. Tuvia Sokolovsky, a strength-and-conditioning trainer, scrambled from his bed and forced open a window. He dropped outside as the Palestinians rushed in. At least one of them opened fire as Sokolovsky dashed, but the bullets missed the man.
Inside the apartment, the attackers rounded up their captives: Gutfreund, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Andre Spitzer, Jacov Springer, and Moshe Weinberg. By this point, the Black September mission had already realized a measure of success. The cell had penetrated the Olympic Village and taken hostages, and its members were unharmed. But there was still a chance for the hostages to resist. Some of these Israelis were veterans of their country’s many wars and possessed the light feet and powerful frames of lifelong athletes. These men had had an understanding of how and why to fight. Weinberg, a wrestling coach, acted first. He lunged at Afif with a kitchen knife. Another Palestinian fired. The bullet slammed into the side of the coach’s mouth. Weinberg fell. It was a grotesque injury, but not fatal—a pass-through that missed his skull. He sputtered blood; his senses and much of his strength were intact. The Palestinians herded their unwounded captives through the apartment and bound them with their precut ropes.
Afif was not satisfied. With other members of his cell to help him, he forced Weinberg to his feet, ordered him outside onto Connollystrasse, and set out to seize more hostages. Weinberg was the quick-thinking sort, more than a match for the men who had captured him. He led Afif past Apartment 2, where smaller-statured Israeli athletes were quartered, toward Apartment 3, where Israeli wrestlers and weightlifters lived; these men brought muscle to a fight. Inside, Afif and his cell gathered six more hostages—David Berger, Zeev Friedman, Eliezer Halfin, Yossef Romano, Gad Tsabari, and Mark Slavin—and marched them at gunpoint outside, toward apartment 1.
Tsabari ran. One of the captors opened fire. Again the bullets flew wide. (As is the case with many who carry Kalashnikovs, the Black September terrorists were well armed but not crack shots.) Near the apartment’s entrance, Weinberg lunged again. Even after being shot, he was formidable—a thick-necked career wrestler who had served as an Israeli commando. He punched one of the Palestinians in the face, fracturing his jaw. The man dropped his rifle as he fell. Weinberg scrambled to pick it up. There was not enough time. Another guard fired, shooting the coach several times. He collapsed. The remaining Israelis were forced inside, where Romano, a weightlifter on crutches from a recent training injury, sprang at their captors. After a struggle, one of the Palestinians opened fire. Romano’s torso was shredded by automatic fire.
The Black September operation was a secret no more. The sounds of gunfire had awakened the Olympic Village, and an anemic counter-terrorism response began. A short while later, an unarmed German guard made his way on foot to the building, carrying a handheld two-way radio. There he spotted a man in a mask at the doorway, clutching a rifle. The security guard reported what he saw to his dispatch center, beginning a chain of notifications: to other apartments, to the Munich police, to the interior ministry of Bavaria, to the federal police, and to the German chancellor and diplomatic corps, which called Israel’s ambassador at his residence in Bonn.
At 5:08 A.M., the terrorists dropped three pieces of paper from the apartment to a security officer below. The papers contained their demands. German police ringed the building and the world watched on live television as the first deadline for executions, and then others, passed. Israel reacted as expected. It refused to negotiate. A deal was struck on the ground: The Germans would provide passage by helicopter to a nearby NATO airfield, from where the hostages and their captors would be flown by passenger aircraft to an Arab nation. Much of the world had not yet organized for domestic counterterrorism action, and did not have highly trained units designated for these moments. The West Germans were unprepared. The end came quickly. That night, after the Black September cell surveyed the Boeing passenger jet that was to carry the captors and captives from Europe, the Germans initiated an ambush at the airfield. It failed. The hostage seizure descended into a gunfight, in which the terrorists turned their Kalashnikovs on their hostages, who were bound and helpless before them.
On the morning of September 6, not quite twenty-four hours after Afif and his subordinates had scaled the fence, Jim McKay, an ABC television sportscaster, introduced the world to the age when military assault rifles had become elemental ingredients in forms of terrorism that would only grow. “Our worst fears have been realized tonight,” he said, and then gave a summary of the number of athletes seized. Eleven men in all, he said, and added: “They’re all gone.”
Inside the Soviet Union, arms production continued. Throughout the mid-1960s, Soviet arms designers had watched the American rollout of the M-16 and had examined captured specimens from Vietnam. They had not been
