‘Tear down this wall’ was the famous challenge made by Ronald Reagan, a United States President, to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This challenge was made to destroy the Berlin wall. It was made in a speech to celebrate the 750th anniversary of Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate on the 12th of June, 1987. Reagan challenged Gorbachev, who was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union then, to tear the Berlin wall down to symbolize his desire for increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc.

Response

When the speech was made, it didn’t receive as much publicity as we now think it would have got. It got only a little publicity and little coverage from the media. Besides this, the response of Germany was not made public. In fact Germany didn’t immediately make any official statement or didn’t give any reply to this challenge as at that time opening the wall seemed almost impossible for them. It sounded very much like an impossible and unrealistic prospect.

The speech didn’t impress anyone from Germany and the note worthy fact is that even the communists didn’t like the prospect of opening the wall and they were said to be unimpressed by this speech. The Soviet press agency called Tess said that the challenge was not a right one to make at that time and they accused Reagon of giving an – “openly provocative, war-mongering speech.” They meant that the speech was only meant to provoke disturbances among the government and it was just made to instigate war.

But, after some 29 months, Gorbachev told the Berliners to destroy the wall and the people did as they were told. Soon after this, the Soviet Union collapsed unexpectedly but the tearing down of the wall didn’t have to do anything with this collapsing of the Soviet Union.

In September, 1990, then former President Reagan came back to Berlin and there he did some symbolic hammer swings at a remaining piece of the Berlin wall.

Helmut Kohl, the former West German Chancellor, told at that time that he would never forget the fact that he had been standing near Reagan while the latter challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall. He also said that Reagan helped Europe very much and to put in his exact words, he said about Reagan that ‘He was a stroke of luck for the world, especially for Europe.’

‘Tear down this wall’ speech is always remembered as an important chapter in the history of Cold War, though some people disagree to the fact that this speech influenced the destruction of the Berlin wall.