Oktoberfest Bomb

Posting this just after 40th anniversary in 2020. Luckily perhaps no photograph was taken on the day but have made a reconstructed Google Map of the evening.


40 years ago today my wife Angie aged 14 went to the Oktoberfest in central Munich with her 16 yo sister who was meeting up with her 1st-year apprentice colleagues. Angie had arranged to meet up with a school friend & the sisters went their own way on the site and agreed to meet outside a beer tent at 10:00 pm to walk to the train station.



Angie and her friend arrived at the meeting point early. The friend who lived in the same town and would have taken the same train got bored & as soon as the 10:00 pm time came, somehow managed to persuade Angie, against all her natural instincts, not to wait any longer and start the walk to the station. They passed out the main gate & were about 100 metres away when the bomb went off. Angie thought it was a supersonic plane boom. They continued home.


Meanwhile, sister arrived at the agreed meeting point a few minutes late & waited & waited. Then heard what she assumed were fireworks and thought 'how nice, don't normally have fireworks at the fest'.


Eventually, she gave up and walked to the main entrance only to see bodies and a horse being covered with white sheets. 13 people were killed & 213 injured. Given it was a Friday evening and there are on average some 300,000  people a day on the site, I guess almost a miracle not more loss of life.


Angie relaxing back home was astonished how joyful her sister was to see here when she arrived. Only then did she find out what had happened. As she says to this day it was her second birth-day.


Had the girls met at say 10:05 & walked through the packed main avenue to the main entrance they would almost certainly have been at the bomb site at the time it went off.


The bombing was the most serious terrorist attack in Germany's history (up to Sept. 2020). Initially, the young man who planted it was assumed to be alone and with serious personal problems. Theories about a right-wing fascist organised group were dismissed until 2014 when the case was reopened and now is thought to have been the cause.