In the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's newest film, Munich, the legendary director will be the curious dilemma of having to present 1972 German authorities as either inept and calculating - or perhaps both.

For a Jewish man creating an incredibly controversial movie about the Israeli response to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the hands of an extremist Palestinian group called Black September, this will be a significant chore.

Many critics of the German response to the hostage taking on Sept. 5, 1972 believe there was a deliberate bumbling of the rescue effort the last gasp of a society that had done its best to eradicate from the planet. Many of these same critics have raised alarm at Spielberg's attempt to recreate the slaughter and the controversial Israeli response, using an equally controversial but large out of print (except in Spanish) book called Vengeance by George Jonas.

Spielberg is apparently planning to depict one or more of the Israeli assassins as developing a guilty conscience over the covert murders of the Black September terrorists and the planners of the Munich slaughter. This, of course, is a complement by Spielberg, even to assume the Mossad thugs who continue vengeance killings today are emotionally capable of possessing a conscience since adopting such a role usually requires a resume that includes a background as a sociopath.

These criticisms of Spielberg, of course, are largely bogus because fiction is always a matter of "what if" and a speculation on what might have happened, rather than the cold historical representations of non-fiction that requires every i dotted and every t crossed. What if a Mossad hit man did feel guilt over answering murder with murder - living up to the ideals of his faith rather than to the security demands of the Israeli State. What if the premiere of that state - a woman to whom many Israelis would grant sainthood if their faith had allowed - had actually met with members of the hit squad to make certain the deadly deed was done? Critics confuse fact with fiction - or deliberate use this as a ploy to avoid answering the higher moral questions this kind of fictions raises.

Spielberg, however, could make things even worse with the pack of extremist Israeli-defenders if he fails to paint the 1972 Germans in an acceptably vile light.

Since the recreation of the events of Sept. 5, 1972 will occupy the first fifteen minutes of the movie, how Spielberg handles the German question becomes critical, since it will affect the tone of the whole movie.

And there are serious questions to be answered - such as how one of the most efficient and technological societies known to modern man were incapable of handling a handful of terrorists on German soil?

Had the German society deteriorated so greatly in the aftermath of World War II that they could not managed to provide adequate security and to respond when the athletes were taken prisoner. Is it possible that the same authoritarian society that managed death camps for Jews with such monstrous efficiency couldn't manage to provide adequate protection for athletes' apartments during the Olympics?

Some later - possibly questionable reports - even claim Eastern Germans might have actually helped the terrorists gain access and provided them with all the necessary information to make the kidnapping possible. Even less bias reports admit that the terrorists had the key to the Israeli athletes' door, meaning that someone on the Olympic staff had aided the terrorists.

How Spielberg portrays this double dealing and curious sudden German incompetence will be one of his greatest challenges. Will he portray the German authorities as a neutered attack dog, capable of a very loud bark, but remarkably inept at using its teeth?

Had Germany been so castrated by World War II that its once significant ability to fight had dried up, leaving its police and military devoid of anything more lethal than a handful of off-duty marksmen?

Here was the great Western hope at the height of the Cold War who the United States depended upon to hold back the hordes of Soviets expected to spill over its borders at any minute, incapable of putting more than a token effort when dealing with terrorists.

Another consideration is the fact that Germany during this period had already collected decades of experience in dealing with East/West espionage - with nearly every spy from every country making East or West Berlin their home for a least part of each year, each dedicated to delving out the deepest secrets of their Soviet enemies with skill and high tech spy equipment. And yet with all of this talent within easy reach, the Germans were incapable of counting the number of terrorists so that when setting the trap the Germans might position more than the necessary number of snipers to kill the terrorists before the terrorists could kill the athletes.

These same Germans, who invented the coordinated amour and air attack called Blitzkrieg - the most revolutionary change in warfare since the invention of the Roman chariot - could not get their armored vehicles to a military air base in time to spring the trap on the terrorists.

With this level of German efficiency equal to what we might expect from reruns of Hogan's Heroes, it is a wonder the West managed to win the Cold War at all.

Beyond even the fact that Germany refused to allow experienced Israeli counter terrorism teams access to the compound so that they might attempt to rescue their own, Germany seemed to lack any negotiators of its own - this despite the fact that for decades, Germany had been had been the center of prisoner exchanges between the West and the Soviet Block? Who did all of those negotiations and why had Germany failed to call on them rather than leaving the negotiations to a local police chief and the Egyptian Olympic chief, whose country was within months of invading Israeli?

How will Spielberg paint this 1972 Germany? If he sticks to the lame story that is typically told of screw up after screw up, we can expect all of the Germans to look like Sgt. Schultz, each of them saying, "I know nothing," while the real questions remain unanswered even in fictional form.