World War I and revolution
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, life in Munich became very difficult, as the Allied blockade of Germany led to food and fuel shortages. During French air raids in 1916 three bombs fell on Munich. After World War I, the city was at the center of much political unrest. In November 1918 on the eve of revolution, Ludwig III and his family fled the city. After the murder of the first republican premier of Bavaria Kurt Eisner in February 1919 by Anton Graf von Arco-Valley, a member of the right-wing Thule Gesellschaft (Thule Society), the Bavarian Soviet Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik or Münchner Räterepublik) was proclaimed. After Communists had taken power, Lenin, who had lived in Munich some years before, sent a congratulatory telegram, but the Soviet Republic was put down on May 3, 1919 by the Freikorps. After the Räterepublik had been brutally put down and the republican government had been restored, Munich subsequently became a hotbed of right-wing politics, among which Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rose to prominence.
Weimar Republic / Nazi Regime and World War II
In 1923 Hitler and his supporters, who at that time were concentrated in Munich, staged the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic and seize power. The revolt failed, resulting in Hitler's arrest and the temporary crippling of the Nazi Party, which was virtually unknown outside Munich. At the end of the Residentzstrasse, were the putsch resulted in the death of 16 Nazi's and 4 policemen, the Bayern gouvernment, after the war, placed a plaque on the ground with the names of the 4 policemen that died there.
Munich remained a center of cultural life during the Weimar period, as figures such as Lion Feuchtwanger, Bertolt Brecht and Oskar Maria Graf were active.
The city however would once again become a Nazi stronghold when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. Because of its importance to the rise of Nazism, the Nazis called it the Hauptstadt der Bewegung ("capital of the movement"). The NSDAP headquarters were in Munich and many Führerbauten ("Führer-buildings") were built around the Königsplatz, some of which have survived to this day. During the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, Hitler eliminated potential political rivals. Ernst Röhm was killed in Munich's Stadelheim Prison.
In 1938, the Munich Agreement, Neville Chamberlain's famous act of appeasement to Hitler, was signed in the city by representatives of Germany, Italy, France and the Britain. It ceded the mostly German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland to Germany. One year later Georg Elser failed in an attempt to assassinate Hitler during his annual speech to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. The Bürgerbraukeller is no longer there, but other beerhalls where Hitler spoke, like the Hofbraukeller, the famous Hofbrauhaus and the Löwenbraukeller are still there. One of the examples of Nazi architecture in München is the Haus der Deutschen Kunst, an art museum designed by architect Paul Ludwig Troost.
Munich was the base of the White Rose (German: Die Weiße Rose), a group of students that formed a resistance movement from June 1942 to February 1943. The core members were arrested and executed following a distribution of leaflets in Munich University by Hans and Sophie Scholl.
The city was very heavily damaged by allied bombing during World War II - the city was hit by 71 air raids over a period of six years.
 

After American occupation in 1945, Munich was completely rebuilt following a meticulous and - by comparison to other war-ravaged German cities - rather conservative plan which preserved its pre-war street grid.
In 1957 Munich's population passed the 1 million mark. In 1958 Munich hosted the Chess Olympiad.
Munich was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics, during which Israeli athletes were assassinated by Palestinian terrorists (see Munich massacre), when terrorist gunmen from the Palestinian "Black September" group took hostage members of the Israeli Olympic team. A rescue attempt by the West German government was unsuccessful and resulted in the deaths of the Israeli hostages, five of the terrorists, and one German police officer.
Several games of the 1974 World Cup were also held in the city, including the German triumph against the Netherlands in a legendary final. Several games of the 2006 World Cup were also held in Munich.
In 1992 Munich’s new airport was inaugurated and the inauguration of the Neue Messe, the new exhibition centre on the site of the former airport of Riem, took place in 1998.
The current (2007) Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising on June 29, 1951. Ratzinger served as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.
Politics
Munich's current mayor is Christian Ude of the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany). Munich has a nearly unbroken history of SPD governments since World War II, which is remarkable because the rest of Bavaria is a conservative stronghold, with the CSU (Christian Social Union) winning absolute majorities among the Bavarian electorate in nearly all elections at the communal, state, and federal levels.
As capital of Bavaria, Munich is an important political center in Germany and the seat of the Bavarian Landtag (the state parliament), the Staatskanzlei (the state chancellery) and of all state departments.
Several national and international authorities are located in Munich, including the Bundesfinanzhof (the highest German tax court) and the European Patent Office.