Reagan at the Berlin Wall
In Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, two years before the Wall fell, Reagan made a direct challenge to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” It was a stunning challenge before the whole world at one of the most iconic places in the world—the Berlin Wall which for more than two decades had stood as a monument to the Cold War, to the tensions between the Communist capital in Moscow and the Capitalist U.S. Two-and-a-half decades prior, another U.S. President had come to the same wall to lament the callousness of Communism: John F. Kennedy. In many ways, Reagan’s speech was inspired by Kennedy’s speech at the Berlin Wall in 1961. This paper will show how.
Kennedy used the Berlin Wall as a political tool to show that he was both united with the common men and women of the world and hard on Communism. He identified as a Berliner in his speech, saying in German, “Ich eine Berliner!” (Kennedy, 1961). Reagan used this same term, “Berliner,” and the same idea in his speech when he stated, “Every man is a Berliner” (Reagan, 1987). Reagan...
References
Kennedy, J. F. (1961). Berlin Wall speech. Retrieved from http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/john-fitzgerald-kennedy/ich-bin-ein-berliner-speech-1963.php
Reagan, R. (1987). Speech at Berlin Wall. Retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/summer/berlin.html
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