Up until 1939, Oberwiesenfeld was largely used as an airfield.

After 1945, the Oberwiesenfeld area remained fallow, and was known as a "Trümmerberg," which in German refers to a hill erected from the rubble resulting from the destruction caused by bombings during the war.

Following the war, the US Army occupied this area and had facilities at the Oberwiesefeld. In October 1957, the Army housed most of the refugees from the Hungarian Revolution in a camp at this facility.

Apart from infrastructure projects such as the Oberwiesenfeld Ice Rink, the area remained largely vacant during the post-war decades and presented an ideal site for the construction of the Olympic Stadium and complex.

The International Olympic Committee awarded Munich the 1972 Summer Olympic Games on 26 April 1966.The proposed plans for the urban redevelopment of the Oberwiesenfeld area were solidified.Something that was seen as innovative at the time and that decades later would be commonplace in major sporting events.

The old airfield, intensely used up until 1939,when lost its importance as the Munich-Riem airport was opened that year and was expanded during the next thirty years until it was decommissioned in May 1992. As a result, Oberwiesenfeld airfield area remained largely idle.

When bidding for the 1972 Summer Games,West Germany used the arguments and the concept about an idea of "green and sunny Olympic Games", with an emphasis on democratic and liberty values. Officials sought to integrate optimism toward the future with a positive attitude toward technology and modernist ideals,and in so doing set aside memories of the past, such as the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin under Hitler. The architecture firm of Günther Behnisch and its partners developed a comprehensive and avant-garde master plan for the sports and recreation areas, which was under construction from 1968 until 1972. The landscape layout was designed by Günther Grzimek. The eye-catching tensile structure that covers much of the park was designed by German architect and engineer Frei Otto with Behnisch. At the end, the project cost 1.35 billion German marks to complete.

The name "Olympiapark" was related to the city's administrative commission practice for naming metro stations along the city's public transport system.As U and S-system (subway and metropolitan railroad) routes in the city area. On 3 November 1969, they chosen the name "Olympiapark" for the new subway station inside Olympic village, set on the U3 line of the Munich U-Bahn. This naming decision was based on the idea that the name "Olympiapark" was related to the central theme of a "green and sunny Olympic Games". It was also related to the central function of the U-Bahn station, which, together with the bus system,served all the area logistic needs at the area during the games and after their end. The term quickly entered into quasi-official common parlance, and consequently into the international media use. In most situations, the meaning established by the administrative commission is used to describe the entire area, not just the U-Bahn station,unlike was originally intended.[1]