The first men stood at gunpoint on September 26, 1972. The most difficult hour in the Federal Republic to date was just three weeks ago: in Munich, Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli Olympic team and took them hostage. They murdered two more in the Olympic village. Nine other athletes died at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield – during the spectacularly unsuccessful rescue operation by the police. Two police officers and five of the eight terrorists also died.
GSG 9 launched after the Olympic assassination
The operation was a disaster for the German security authorities – and a wake-up call. As a result, the federal government under Chancellor Willy Brandt set up a special anti-terrorist unit at the Federal Border Police: the GSG 9.
Just five years later, commander Ulrich Wegener’s troops had their greatest test: rescuing the hostages from the hijacked Lufthansa plane in Landshut. Four terrorists took control of the plane on October 13, 1977. After a random flight through Europe and the Middle East, the plane landed in Mogadishu, Somalia, with around 90 people on board on October 17. After tough negotiations, Wegener’s men gave the okay – they stormed the plane. And the “Miracle of Mogadishu” turned the GSG 9 into a myth: all the hostages survived. Pilot Jürgen Schumann had already been shot dead by the terrorists.
But there have also been setbacks in the elite unit’s 50-year history. The mission to arrest RAF terrorists at the train station in Bad Kleinen (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania) in 1993 ended in a debacle: an official and a terrorist died – but even such failures could not shake the myth. The Federal Police’s GSG 9, based in Sankt-Augustin (North Rhine-Westphalia) and Berlin, is still considered one of the best anti-terrorist units in the world and has been continuously expanded and professionalized over the fifty years of its existence.
See the photo gallery above for a look back at 50 years of GSG 9 in pictures.
Sources: Federal PoliceDPA news agency