Reagan Challenges Wall: 'Tear Down This Barrier' at Berlin

President Ronald Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, and delivered four words that his own State Department had tried to remove from the speech: "Tear down this wall." The line, written by speechwriter Peter Robinson after a dinner party where a German hostess told him that people in Berlin felt the Wall's presence every moment, almost did not survive the interagency review process. National Security Advisor Colin Powell and Deputy Chief of Staff Kenneth Duberstein argued the demand was too provocative. Reagan kept it in. The Berlin Wall had divided the city since August 13, 1961, when East German workers strung barbed wire across streets and began constructing concrete barriers. By 1987, the Wall was a layered system of two parallel walls, a "death strip" with guard towers, and anti-vehicle trenches. At least 140 people had died attempting to cross. President Kennedy's 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech had expressed American solidarity, but Reagan's address went further by directly challenging Soviet leadership. Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who had introduced glasnost and perestroika, did not respond publicly. At the time, many Western commentators dismissed Reagan's demand as theatrical posturing with no practical consequence. The speech received modest press coverage and was overshadowed by other events. Reagan's own aides considered it a minor address. Two years and five months later, on November 9, 1989, the Wall fell. Whether Reagan's speech contributed meaningfully to that outcome remains debated, but the line became the defining soundbite of Cold War triumphalism. Reagan himself, by then retired and beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's, attended a ceremony at the Wall in September 1990 and personally took a few swings at the remaining concrete with a hammer.