On June 12, 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and challenged the Soviet Union and its general secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, to tear down the Berlin Wall.
The Berlin Wall had been erected in 1961 in response to the Republikflucht (republic flight), the mass migration of East Germans to West Germany. Between the end of World War II in 1945 and the creation of the Berlin Wall in 1961, approximately 3.5 million East Germans escaped to the West. One of the easiest ways for East Germans to do this was simply to go to East Berlin, cross the street into West Berlin, then take a flight from Tempelhof airport to West Germany.
Most of the people who defected to the West were educated professionals, people who realized that they and their families could enjoy a much greater standard of living in the West, as well as the basic freedoms they had been denied. From the communist perspective, since these people had been educated at state expense, they were thieves who had stolen their education. Also, these people — doctors, engineers, architects and more — were essential to running a modern state. East Germany found it hard to replace these professionals and found it deeply humiliating that its society's most educated people rejected the communist system and fled West in droves.
Throughout the 1950s the problem became increasingly serious for the East German government and, by extension, the Soviet Union, which dominated the smaller communist nation. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev constantly spoke to U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower about the need for a permanent peace treaty with Germany (a permanent peace treaty officially ending World War II would not be signed between the U.S. and Germany until 1991). Theoretically, such a treaty would hand West Berlin to the East German state and end the defections.
Eisenhower's position, and John F. Kennedy's after him, was that the United States was not occupying West Berlin by leave of the German people or East German government. Rather, Americans had fought and died to defeat Nazism in World War II, and the U.S. was justly administering its portion of Berlin in line with the wartime agreements with the Soviets, the French and the British. The United States was determined to protect West Berliners from the spread of an unjust communist system.
With no permanent solution in sight, Khrushchev and the East German chancellor, Walter Ulbricht, built the Berlin Wall to physically prevent East German residents from crossing into the West and freedom. In 1963, Kennedy visited Berlin and pointed out the stark contrast in standards of living and liberty that existed on the east and the west sides of the wall. The city became a visible example of the moral and literal poverty of the communist system.
By the 1980s, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were in a state of economic decline. Standards of living had been higher in the 1960s than they were 20 years later. After the death of a number of Soviet leaders due to age, the Soviet politburo turned to 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, the first Soviet leader born after the 1917 Russian Revolution and the first since Vladimir Lenin to have a college education.
Gorbachev was given a mandate by the Politburo to find a way to make the communist economy dynamic and improve standards of living. To this end he introduced two new policies: glasnost (openness), which called for greater transparency in the Soviet government, and perestroika (restructuring), which called for more liberal economic policies designed to jump-start the Soviet economy. These policies were not intended to destroy the communist system, or transition it into a capitalist economy, but rather to buoy up traditional Marxist-Leninist economics.
First elected to the White House in 1980, Reagan took a hard line against communism and the Soviet Union. In a 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, he called the Soviet Union a “dark and evil empire.” But he didn't just spout rhetoric; Reagan actively supported Afghanistan’s mujahedeen fighters with weapons in their war against the Soviets and gave aid to anti-communists in central America. When a pro-communist coup toppled the moderate government in the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, United States forces invaded and restored freedom.
Reagan and Gorbachev first met during a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 1985. They met again a year later in Reykjavík, Iceland, and together agreed on certain arms-control measures. Many of Reagan’s advisers, and many of his constituents, feared that perhaps the president was taking a softer line on communism. Reagan’s anti-communist rhetoric had indeed toned down, and even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher feared that Reagan was giving up too much to the Soviets. After all, the agreements Reagan and Gorbachev made dealt with nuclear weapons and did not address the large Soviet conventional forces in Eastern Europe.
Reagan therefore felt the need to shore up his base and remind the anti-communists back home and U.S. allies that he still stood firmly against the Soviet Union. In 1987 he traveled to a G-7 Summit in Venice, Italy, and received an invitation from the West German government to speak in West Berlin, commemorating the city's 750th anniversary. In his book “Reagan: The Life,” biographer H.W. Brands wrote:
“(Reagan) insisted on reminding the world of the moral difference between the United States and the Soviet Union. (White House Chief of Staff) Howard Baker read a draft of the speech that included a challenge to Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Supposing the phrase to be the work of an overzealous speechwriter, Baker sought to strike it out. The State Department seconded his caution. 'But Reagan was tough on it,' Baker recalled. The language was the president’s, he learned. 'Those were Reagan's words.' And Reagan didn't want them tampered with. 'He said leave it in.'"
Reagan began the roughly 27-minute speech before the Brandenburg Gate, which was the most iconic landmark in the divided city, and cited Kennedy's 1963 visit. He then talked about the Marshall Plan, America's $13 billion postwar aid package to Europe, and cited Khrushchev's speech to the United Nations in which said, “We (the Soviets) will bury you (the West).” Reagan then addressed the modern political situation, with the apparent beginnings of liberalization in the Soviet Union:
“And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.”
Reagan noted that the West welcomed such changes, but he cautioned that perhaps their ultimate purpose was not to destroy the Soviet system but to strengthen it. He then stated that there was one thing the Soviets could do to send an undeniable message to the world about their desire to liberalize. In the speech's most stirring passage, Reagan said:
“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Reagan noted that the process would be difficult, but that the United States would help in any way it could. The speech then continued for several more minutes, with Reagan re-emphasizing the need for arms-control agreements and the importance of German unity. Reagan's direct challenge to Gorbachev, however, became the center, the moral gravity of the speech. Indeed, the phrase “tear down this wall!” placed the Soviet system's moral bankruptcy at center stage, and despite the Soviet media agency Tass' dismissal of the speech as unnecessary warmongering on Reagan's part, it forced Soviet leaders to face the hypocrisy of their policies.
Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan noted in her book “When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan”: “What a moment. Reagan found that as he stood near the wall and looked at it an anger welled within him, and he was certain it was reflected on his face. (I recently looked at a tape of the speech and realized it was true, his anger showed.)”
The Berlin Wall fell over two years later, in November 1989. Its destruction, and indeed that of the entire Eastern Bloc's communist system, resulted from many factors. There is no denying, however, the role that the West's moral leadership played during the Cold War and in those final, crucial years of the Soviet regime. Further, there is no denying Reagan's leadership. Like Abraham Lincoln over a century earlier, Reagan had the ability to cut to the moral heart of the matter, making the complex issues of the Cold War understandable to the common man and drawing a distinct contrast between the liberty of the Untied States and the despotism of the Soviet Union.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com