The 1972 Munich Olympics--remembered almost exclusively for the
devastating terrorist attack on the Israeli team--were intended to
showcase the New Germany and replace lingering memories of the Third
Reich. That hope was all but obliterated in the early hours of September
5, when gun-wielding Palestinians murdered 11 members of the Israeli
team. In the first cultural and political history of the Munich
Olympics, Kay Schiller and Christopher Young set these Games into both
the context of 1972 and the history of the modern Olympiad. Delving into
newly available documents, Schiller and Young chronicle the impact of
the Munich Games on West German society.