Tear Down This Wall

Standing at the Brandenburg Gate in divided Berlin on June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan addressed the Soviet leader directly: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" His own advisers had tried to cut the line as too provocative.

The Berlin Wall fell two years later, and the speech became a symbol of the West's confidence in the Cold War's final act — though historians debate how much any single address shaped the events that followed.