Key moments - 'Tear down this wall'

1 Nov 2009, 12:00 am   -   Source: Bryony Jones, SBS
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Ronald Reagan's speech at the Berlin Wall came during a trip to mark the city's 750th anniversary (AFP/Getty)

Ronald Reagan's speech at the Berlin Wall came during a trip to mark the city's 750th anniversary (AFP/Getty)

June 12, 1987: US President Ronald Reagan demands Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall.

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June 12, 1987: US President Ronald Reagan demands Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall.

In Berlin to mark the city's 750th anniversary, Ronald Reagan used an address at the Wall to urge an end to the USSR's restrictive policies.

Reagan believed that if the citizens of the Eastern Bloc were given more freedom – of speech, of movement, and of who to vote for – the Cold War would come to an end.

Standing just steps away from the Brandenburg Gate, which was just out of reach behind the wall, Reagan challenged the Soviet regime to change its ways.

"We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

"There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakeable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

'Provocative' speech

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate, Mr Gorbachev, open this gate.

"Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Reagan later admitted that the State Department and the National Security Council felt those key lines were "too provocative".




But he insisted they stay in the speech – which went on to become one of the defining moments of the Cold War.

With speakers pointed across the concrete barrier to the East, the US president insisted the Iron Curtain's days were numbered.

And more than two years before the wall's eventual collapse, he predicted that the impetus for change would come not from the Communist regime's leaders, but from the people of East Berlin, of East Germany, and of Eastern Europe themselves.

'This wall will fall'

"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. This wall cannot withstand freedom."

As it turned out, American efforts to have Reagan's comments heard in East Berlin did not go exactly to plan.

"I could see the East German police keeping people away so that they couldn’t hear," the President said later.

"They simply don't realise it's going to take more than that to keep out the stirrings of freedom."

Reagan would be proved right in October and November 1989, when East Germans gathered in their thousands, on the streets of Leipzig, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Berlin to demand change.


 

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