Since the first Olympic Games in 1896, winning the Olympics meant more than just a medal, it demonstrated the power that the winning country possesses. Although the Olympics are intended to show peaceful amiability between all countries, geopolitics is still a major factor in the Olympics. The president of the International Olympic Committee states that “sport can contribute to development and peace only if it is not used as a stage for political competition and if we do not have the courage to address our disagreements in a peaceful and direct political dialogue and not to the detriment of the athletes." Many historians question whether geopolitics played an important role in the Olympics during the Cold War era. The answer is not an opinion; geopolitics has never been absent from the Olympics and this is especially true of the Cold War. The Cold War was a battle for political power that will dominate the rest of the world. The idea that it was a battle for power explains the arms race, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Logically, this need to upstage the opposing superpower has spread to international sporting competition. With all this competition taking place during the Cold War, the Olympics literally became a race against communism or democracy. Because geopolitics played such a large role in the Olympics during the Cold War era, the fate of the athletes was ultimately altered. To understand how the Cold War affected the Olympics, we must understand the Cold War itself. The Cold War began as World War II was ending; in February 1945 the three allied powers, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, participated in the Yalta Conference. The main topic of discussion of the conference was the reorganization of post-World War II Europe. In May of the same yes... in the middle of the newspaper... he organized a retaliation with Operation Wrath of God. This operation systematically killed the remaining members of Black September and from then on Palestinians and Israelis fought each other to defend what they each thought it was rightfully theirs. The murdered athletes might have lived completely different lives if they had not met their deaths so suddenly. Their deaths were caused by a ripple effect of the Cold War, if the Balfour Declaration had not occurred the Jews would not have had a homeland, which would have decreased tension between Israelis and Palestinians, which would ultimately mean that Black September would not have had If we had needed to take the Israeli athletes hostage that fateful morning, these athletes could have survived the Olympics and returned home safely to their families. In the end, the Munich massacre can be attributed to global tensions.