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"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", also known as the Berlin Wall Speech, was a speech delivered by
United States President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United State ...
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
in
West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
on June 12, 1987. Reagan called for the
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED O ...
,
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
, to open the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...
, which had separated
West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
and
East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
since 1961. The name is derived from a key line in the middle of the speech: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Though Reagan's speech received relatively little media coverage at the time, it became widely known after the
fall of the Berlin Wall The fall of the Berlin Wall (german: Mauerfall) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain and one of the series of eve ...
in 1989. In the post-
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
era, it was often seen as one of the most memorable performances of an American president in Berlin after
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
's "
Ich bin ein Berliner "" (; "I am a Berliner") is a speech by United States President John F. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War and among the most famous anti-communist speeches. Twenty-two mont ...
" speech of 1963. It was written by Peter Robinson—then a speechwriter for the President—who currently hosts the
Uncommon Knowledge ''Uncommon Knowledge'' is a current affairs show hosted by Peter Robinson and produced by the Hoover Institution, where Peter Robinson is a fellow. It currently is funded by several foundations and organizations. Uploads of the program regular ...
program of the
Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, an ...
.


Background

The "tear down this wall" speech was not the first time Reagan had addressed the issue of the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...
. In a visit to West Berlin in June 1982, he stated, "I'd like to ask the Soviet leaders one question ..Why is the wall there?". In 1986, 25 years after the construction of the wall, in response to
West German West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
newspaper ''
Bild-Zeitung ''Bild'' (or ''Bild-Zeitung'', ; ) is a German tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer SE. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paper ''Bild am Sonntag'' ("''Bild on Sunday''") is published instead, which ...
'' asking when he thought the wall could be removed, Reagan said, "I call upon those responsible to dismantle it
oday Uday or Odai is a masculine name in Arabic as well as several Indian languages. In many Indian languages it means 'dawn' or 'rise'. The Arabic name (عدي) means 'runner' or 'rising'. List of people * Uday Benegal, Indian musician * Uday Pratap S ...
. On the day before Reagan's 1987 visit, 50,000 people had demonstrated against the presence of the American president in West Berlin. The city saw the largest police deployment in its history after World War II. During the visit itself, wide swaths of Berlin were closed off to prevent further anti-Reagan protests. The district of
Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in 1990 it ha ...
, in particular, was targeted in this respect, with movement throughout this portion of the city in effect restrained completely (for instance the U1 U-Bahn line was shut down). (in German) About those demonstrators, Reagan said at the end of his speech: "I wonder if they ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they are doing again". The speech drew controversy within the Reagan administration, with several senior staffers and aides advising against the phrase, saying anything that might cause further East-West tensions or potential embarrassment to Gorbachev, with whom President Reagan had built a good relationship, should be omitted. American officials in
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
and presidential
speechwriter A speechwriter is a person who is hired to prepare and write speeches that will be delivered by another person. Speechwriters are employed by many senior-level elected officials and executives in the government and private sectors. They can also b ...
s, including Peter Robinson, thought otherwise. According to an account by Robinson, he traveled to West Germany to inspect potential speech venues, and gained an overall sense that the majority of West Berliners opposed the wall. Despite getting little support for suggesting Reagan demand the wall's removal, Robinson kept the phrase in the speech text. On Monday, May 18, 1987, President Reagan met with his speechwriters and responded to the speech by saying, "I thought it was a good, solid draft." White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker objected, saying it sounded "extreme" and "unpresidential", and Deputy U.S. National Security Advisor Colin Powell agreed. Nevertheless, Reagan liked the passage, saying, "I think we'll leave it in." Chief speechwriter
Anthony Dolan Anthony R. Dolan (born in Norwalk, Connecticut, July 7, 1948) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan from March 1981 until the end of Reagan's second term in 1989.The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' in November 2009, Dolan gives a detailed account of how in an Oval Office meeting that was prior to Robinson's draft Reagan came up with the line on his own. He records impressions of his own reaction and Robinson's at the time. This led to a friendly exchange of letters between Robinson and Dolan over their differing accounts, which ''The Wall Street Journal'' published.


Speech

Arriving in Berlin on Friday, June 12, 1987, President and Mrs. Reagan were taken to the Reichstag, where they viewed the wall from a balcony. Reagan then made his speech at the Brandenburg Gate at 2:00 p.m., in front of two panes of
bulletproof glass Bulletproof glass, ballistic glass, transparent armor, or bullet-resistant glass is a strong and optically transparent material that is particularly resistant to penetration by projectiles. Like any other material, it is not completely impenetr ...
. Among the spectators were West German President Richard von Weizsäcker, Chancellor
Helmut Kohl Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. Kohl's 16-year tenure is the longes ...
, and West Berlin Mayor
Eberhard Diepgen Eberhard Diepgen (born 13 November 1941) is a German lawyer and politician who served as Mayor of West Berlin from 1984 to 1989 and again as Mayor of (united) Berlin, from 1991 until 2001, as member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). E ...
. The current title of the speech comes from Reagan's rhetorical demand of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union: Later on in his speech, President Reagan said, "As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner, 'This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom." Another highlight of the speech was Reagan's call to end the arms race with his reference to the Soviets'
SS-20 The RSD-10 ''Pioneer'' (russian: ракета средней дальности (РСД) «Пионер» tr.: ''raketa sredney dalnosti (RSD) "Pioner"''; en, Medium-Range Missile "Pioneer") was an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a ...
nuclear weapons, and the possibility "not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth."


Response and legacy

The speech received "relatively little coverage from the media", ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine wrote 20 years later.
John Kornblum John Christian Kornblum (born February 6, 1943) is an American diplomat and businessman. He entered the American Foreign Service in 1964. Over the next 35 years, he served at the State Department in Washington and in Europe. Since 2001, he has ...
, senior US diplomat in Berlin at the time of Reagan's speech, and US Ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2001, said " he speechwasn't really elevated to its current status until 1989, after the wall came down." East Germany's communist rulers were not impressed, dismissing the speech as "an absurd demonstration by a cold warrior", as later recalled by Politburo member
Günter Schabowski Günter Schabowski (; 4 January 1929 – 1 November 2015) was an East German politician who served as an official of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (''Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands'' abbreviated ''SED''), the ruling party du ...
. The Soviet press agency
TASS The Russian News Agency TASS (russian: Информацио́нное аге́нтство Росси́и ТАСС, translit=Informatsionnoye agentstvo Rossii, or Information agency of Russia), abbreviated TASS (russian: ТАСС, label=none) ...
accused Reagan of giving an "openly provocative, war-mongering speech." Former West German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. Kohl's 16-year tenure is the longes ...
said he would never forget standing near Reagan when he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. "He was a stroke of luck for the world, especially for Europe." In an interview, Reagan claimed that the East German police did not allow people to come close to the wall, which prevented the citizens from experiencing the speech at all. Peter Robinson, the White House speech writer who drafted the address, said that the phrase "tear down this wall" was inspired by a conversation with Ingeborg Elz of West Berlin; in a conversation with Robinson, Elz remarked, "If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of ''Glasnost'' and ''perestroika'' he can prove it by getting rid of this wall." In a September 2012 article in ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', Liam Hoare pointed to the many reasons for the tendency for American media to focus on the significance of this particular speech, without weighing the complexity of the events as they unfolded in both East and West Germany and the Soviet Union. Author James Mann disagreed with both critics like Hoare, who saw Reagan's speech as having no real effect, and those who praised the speech as key to shaking Soviet confidence. In a 2007 opinion article in ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', he put the speech in the context of previous Reagan overtures to the Soviet Union, such as the Reykjavik summit of the previous year, which had very nearly resulted in an agreement to eliminate American and Soviet nuclear weapons entirely. He characterized the speech as a way for Reagan to assuage his right-wing critics that he was still tough on communism, while also extending a renewed invitation to Gorbachev to work together to create "the vastly more relaxed climate in which the Soviets sat on their hands when the wall came down." Mann claimed that Reagan "wasn't trying to land a knockout blow on the Soviet regime, nor was he engaging in mere political theater. He was instead doing something else on that damp day in Berlin 20 years efore Mann's article– he was helping to set the terms for the end of the cold war." In November 2019, a bronze statue of Reagan was unveiled near the site of the speech.


Gallery

File:President Ronald Reagan making his Berlin Wall speech.jpg, Reagan making the speech File:President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan during his trip to West Berlin.jpg, West Berlin mayor
Eberhard Diepgen Eberhard Diepgen (born 13 November 1941) is a German lawyer and politician who served as Mayor of West Berlin from 1984 to 1989 and again as Mayor of (united) Berlin, from 1991 until 2001, as member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). E ...
watching the speech File:Berlin-Memorial to the Victims of the Wall-1982.jpg, A section of the wall mentioned in the speech. File:Berlin Wall at the Reagan Library.jpg, A piece of the
Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...
located at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in
Simi Valley, California Simi Valley (; Chumashan languages, Chumash: ''Shimiyi'') is a city in Simi Valley (valley), the valley of the same name in the southeast region of Ventura County, California, United States. Simi Valley is from Downtown Los Angeles, making it ...
File:Tear Down This Wall p10.jpg, Reagan's cue card with the most famous part of the speech


See also

*
Evil Empire speech The "Evil Empire" speech was a speech delivered by U.S. President Ronald Reagan to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983 during the Cold War. In that speech, Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and as "th ...
* ''
Ich bin ein Berliner "" (; "I am a Berliner") is a speech by United States President John F. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War and among the most famous anti-communist speeches. Twenty-two mont ...
'' * Speeches and debates of Ronald Reagan


References


Further reading

* Robinson, Peter. ''It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP''. (2000), hardcover, Warner Books, * Ambassador John C. Kornblum: "Reagan's Brandenburg Concerto",
The American Interest ''The American Interest'' (''AI'') was a bimonthly magazine focusing primarily on foreign policy, international affairs, global economics, and military matters. History The magazine was founded in 2005 by a number of members of the editori ...
, May–June 2007 * Ratnesar, Romesh. "Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War" (2009) * Daum, Andreas W. "America's Berlin, 1945‒2000: Between Myths and Visions". In Frank Trommler (ed.), ''Berlin: The New Capital in the East.'' Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University, 2000, pp. 49–73
online
* Daum, Andreas W. ''Kennedy in Berlin''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.


External links


Full text and audio MP3 of the speech
at AmericanRhetoric.com
Full video
of President Reagan delivering the speech at the Brandenburg Gate, courtesy of the Reagan Foundation.
Ronald Reagan Signed and Inscribed Photograph at the Berlin Wall
Shapell Manuscript Foundation
Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson reflecting on the speech
before the
Commonwealth Club of California The Commonwealth Club of California is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization based in Northern California. Founded in 1903, it is the oldest and largest public affairs forum in the United States. Membership is open to everyone. Act ...
in 2004.
Image of text at National Archives site


by Peter Robinson * * ttps://www.c-span.org/video/?515329-1/ronald-reagans-tear-wall-speech Discussion of "Tear Down This Wall" speech featuring Peter Robinson, June 11, 2021
C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tear Down This Wall 1987 in West Germany 1987 in international relations 1987 in politics 1987 speeches 1987 neologisms 1980s in West Berlin June 1987 events in Europe Allied occupation of Germany Anti-communism in Germany Anti-communism in the United States Anti-communist terminology Articles containing video clips Berlin Wall Cold War speeches German reunification Germany–Soviet Union relations Germany–United States relations United States–West Germany relations Soviet Union–United States relations History of the foreign relations of the United States American political catchphrases Political quotes Presidency of Ronald Reagan Speeches by Ronald Reagan