Tear down this wall!

On June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate, United States president Ronald Reagan gave a speech that is now known by a key line from the middle part: "**Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!**" Reagan wanted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to open the Berlin Wall, which had blocked West Berlin since 1961.

Not many people in the Reagan administration liked the idea of Reagan saying the famous line. In the years after the Cold War, it was seen as one of the most well known speeches of an American president in Berlin after John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech "*Ich bin ein Berliner*". Reagan's speech was written by Peter Robinson.

## Background 
The "tear down this wall" speech was not the first time Reagan had talked about the issue of the Berlin Wall. In a visit to West Berlin in June 1982, he said, "I'd like to ask the Soviet leaders one question [...] Why is the wall there?". In 1986, 25 years after the wall was built, the West German newspaper *Bild-Zeitung* asked Reagan when he thought the wall could be removed.
 with speechwriters before his Berlin visit, 1987]]
On the day before Reagan's 1987 visit, 50,000 people had protested against Reagan. The city had many police officers, the most they have seen since World War II. Reagan talked about the protests and 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 was not popular within the Reagan administration. Some people working with Reagan did not want him saying "Tear down this wall!", saying it might risk the positive relationship Reagan had with Gorbachev. Even though he had little support for adding the line in Reagan's speech, Robinson kept it in the speech text.

Robinson, said that the line "tear down this wall" was inspired after talking with Ingeborg Elz of West Berlin.

Speechwriter Anthony Dolan said in November 2009, that during an Oval Office meeting Reagan came up with the line and not Robinson. This caused Robinson and Dolan to write each other letters defending their own thoughts about who came up with the line.

## Speech 
Reagan arrived in Berlin on Friday, June 12, 1987. Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were taken to the Reichstag where they saw the wall from a balcony. Reagan then gave his speech at the Brandenburg Gate at 2:00&nbsp;p.m., in front of bulletproof glass. West German president Richard von Weizsäcker, chancellor Helmut Kohl, and West Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen were there at the event. John Kornblum, senior U.S. diplomat in Berlin at the time of Reagan's speech, and U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2001, said "[The speech] wasn't really elevated to its current status until 1989, after the wall came down." The Soviet press agency TASS said Reagan's speech was supportive of a war.

In an interview, Reagan said that the East German police did let people to come close to the wall, which kept citizens from seeing him speak. In a September 2012 article in *The Atlantic*, Liam Hoare asked readers to "stop crediting Ronald Reagan for the fall of the Berlin Wall". Mann said that Reagan was "helping to set the terms for the end of the cold war".

## Gallery

File:President Ronald Reagan making his Berlin Wall speech.jpg|Reagan making the speech
File:President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan departure after remarks at Berlin Wall.jpg|Ronald and Nancy Reagan leaving the Brandenburg Gate after the speech
File:President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan during his trip to West Berlin.jpg|West Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen watching the speech
File:President Ronald Reagan and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Berlin Wall.jpg|Reagan being shown the Berlin Wall with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
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 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

## More readings
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## References
## Other websites
* Full text and audio MP3 of the speech
* 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 in 2004.