When the Berlin Wall Fell
Materials & Resources
East Germany opening its border to the West and the fall of the Berlin Wall represented a seismic shift in geopolitics, spurred by a host of factors including a deteriorating Soviet economy, civil unrest, and the political reforms instituted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In one fell swoop, the central enemy of the United States and the force that had shaped American foreign policy for more than 40 years was gone – peacefully. With it went the notion of a communist monolith as outlined by Miller Center scholar Marc Selverstone. In came the realities and challenges of a new world that had to be redrawn and redefined.
Interviews conducted for the Miller Center’s Ronald Reagan Oral History Project paint a vivid picture of how the 40th President of the United States thought about Communism, viewed the U.S. relationship with the Soviet Union, and spoke about the freedom he believed those living behind the Iron Curtain should have. The collection of Miller Center resources about the fall of the wall and the end of the Cold War also includes “When Walls Came Down: Berlin, 9/11 and U.S. Strategy in Uncertain Times” – a conference hosted by the Governing America in a Global Era Program; speeches at the Brandenberg Gate by Presidents Reagan, Kennedy, and Clinton; and the White House Speechwriters Symposium, during which Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson discusses the “tear down this wall” speech.
GOVERNING AMERICA IN A GLOBAL ERA | PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH ARCHIVE
PRESIDENTIAL ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM| WHITE HOUSE SPEECHWRITERS SYMPOSIUM
GOVERNING AMERICA IN A GLOBAL ERA
When Walls Came Down: Berlin, 9/11 and U.S. Strategy in Uncertain Times
The 2009 William and Carol Stevenson Conference, organized by GAGE Faculty Associates Melvyn Leffler and Jeffrey Legro, addressed how American leaders have coped with periods of international uncertainty, from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the 9/11 attacks. The conference brought former policymakers together with scholars to assess how U.S. leaders of the future use the lessons of the past to react to and steer a course through a dynamic global landscape.
PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH ARCHIVE
President Reagan: Address from the Brandenberg Gate
June 12, 1987
Reagan, in of his most iconic moments, demands, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" He declares that in the contest between the West and the Communist world, “[f]reedom is the victor.” He urges the Soviet Union to seek peace, prosperity, and liberalization, to bring East Berlin and West Berlin together – and to open the city to all of Europe.
President Kennedy: "Ich bin ein Berliner"
June 26, 1963
President Kennedy extols the spirit of the citizens and city of Berlin, “besieged for 18 years,” yet living with “the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination.” In solidarity, he declares, “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’”
President Clinton: Remarks at the Brandenberg Gat
June 12, 1994
President Clinton addresses a crowd “where Europe's heart was cut in half and we celebrate unity,” commends the courage of the German people, and urges them to “found a new civil courage, the courage to build.” Now that the Berlin Wall is gone, he says, what must follow is a Europe of independent and democratic nations.
PRESIDENTIAL ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
The cleared transcripts of the Ronald Reagan Oral History Project offer compelling thoughts and memories from those who were inside the White House and in Reagan’s inner circle as Communism began to wane.
George Shultz, Secretary of State
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On the Cold War "end game:"
…[T]he Cold War was all over but the shouting by the time we left office, but there was still an end game. I think President Bush played that end game very skillfully, did a good job with that. But beyond the general notions that we wanted an open and democratic world, I don’t think there was a lot of thought given to that. But the basic precepts I’m sure would have been the things that we would have guided ourselves by.
(Page 28)
Probably Reagan would have made more out of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Bush had a strategy, which was the less crowing he does, the better it will go. I also think he couldn’t imagine that the Soviet Union could fall apart. In his Kiev speech, which people have labeled “chicken Kiev,” he was sort of on the other side. I think Reagan would not have been like that.
(Page 29)
Howard Baker, Jr., Senate Majority Leader; White House Chief of Staff
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On how the “tear down this wall” speech came about:
Tommy Griscom was Communications Director and when I read the speech that came out from the speechwriters I got to that part where it said, “Mr. [Mikhail] Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” I called Tommy, who was my interface with the speechwriters, and I said, “Griscom, come up here.” He came up. I said, “This section where you have the President saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” you really ought to take that out. It’s so unlikely, it’s unpresidential. And Griscom said, “But that’s where I’ll get my sound bite.” Being a man of high principle, I said, “Okay, then leave it in.” That’s a true story. It’s not a flattering story but it’s a true story. I’ve thought a lot of times how terrible it would have been if I had insisted on that coming out.
Those were Reagan’s words, as it turns out. He did that.
…
The public reaction was not nearly as great as I thought it would be because by that time I’d worked myself into sort of an anticipatory rage on what the reaction would be and it was sort of muted. I thought, Well damn, maybe it wasn’t as important as I thought it was. History has treated it very differently.
(Page 11)
Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On how much credit President Reagan deserves for the collapse of the Soviet Union:
All of it. He’s the first one who did it, you see. Everybody else was not willing to say the Cold War was a war that had to be won. He was the one who brought some focus to it and enabled it to be won because he determined that it had to be won. After that, he was far more conciliatory than many people thought he would be, because he wanted to use it – not as a victory to gloat over to demonstrate – current word – triumphalism, or any of that kind of thing. He wanted to bring them around to the idea that they couldn’t win a war so that they would have to negotiate and get a more peaceful, permanent settlement. But the Cold War would never have been won without President Reagan’s leadership – and Mrs. Thatcher, who was very supportive all the way through. He was the one who determined that it had to be won. Otherwise, we would have gone on in this kind of half-light in which we would be trying to appease, or to live with, or to work with, or to contain – all those terms that meant that we weren’t ever going to do anything decisive.
(Page 31)
On the key elements to the campaign to bring down the Soviet Union:
It was the change in determination. It was the change in policy from a passive, containment, get along, two-systems-that-can-work-together and all that, to the determination that you couldn’t work with them. They were not just two systems. They were diametrically and antithetically opposed to each other in every way. In order to get the better days that he was looking for, you had to win the Cold War. As a result of that determination, it was won. Without that determination, I don’t think it would have been. People always said the Soviet Union was going to implode upon itself. But it had been about seventy years of doing it, and it hadn’t done it. With the lack of any effectiveness of public opinion, and with the ability of three or four people in the Kremlin to keep it going, I suspect it would have gone quite a lot longer.
(Page 31)
Frederick Ryan, Director of Presidential Appointments and Scheduling; Chief of Staff, Office of Ronald Reagan
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On how President Reagan felt about the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union:
He was actually up on his ranch on November 19 in 1989 when the wall came down. He heard about it and came right back to Los Angeles. Everyone in the world wanted to interview him from his office about this. … [H]e was very careful about not wanting to step on anything, so he talked to President Bush to receive guidance on what the administration was saying and not to create a wrong message. Then he did some interviews there, but he was very pleased with it. He thought it would happen all along. It was not a surprise to him. And he could see some of the progressions of Poland and Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia and these different places where it was happening.
He followed it closely. He got a lot of briefings from the administration. He stayed in touch with a lot of the leaders of the democracy movements, from Lech Walesa to [Vaclav] Havel and others who were involved in it. His speeches, domestic and overseas, after that became about the march of freedom and the collapse of communism. Looking back, no one knew how far this was going to go. Was it just going to be the Berlin Wall? What would happen next? And he was saying, “Well, I foresee this happening in Poland, and I see Bulgaria.” He had the whole sequence that ended up happening. I think he was very pleased.
… [I]t wasn’t this thing of counting, assessing, “I was right.” It was more, “The people finally got a chance, and now, given the freedom to choose, they’ve chosen freedom.” It was very much about the natural right for people to be free – it was not that he was bragging that he had stood down the communists or that the military buildup had done that.
(Page 18)
On Reagan’s thoughts about President George H.W. Bush not celebrating the moment of the Wall falling:
The comparison was made that had Reagan been in the White House there would have been a speech that wrapped it all together. That very first day when he came from the ranch and spoke to President Bush, there was concern about the question of unification, whether everyone expected that to happen. Of course Ronald Reagan expected it to happen. He said President Bush was saying, “This is for the German people to decide.”
There was a concern in the State Department and the White House that this could go the wrong way if it looked like it was being forced by the West. It could stop some of the movement in other places if there was too much pounding on the chest about how much was accomplished. But he was mindful of that, even though most objective people say, as opposed to the Soviet Union, that the U.S. won the Cold War. He never did anything to make Gorbachev or the other Russian leaders feel that they had somehow been defeated or they had lost. He always looked at the positive side, that they had chosen to let their people have democracy. In some of his speeches he did say that it was the united and unrelenting will to bring freedom around the world that led to this; it wasn’t just an accident.
(Page 19)
On how Reagan regarded Bush’s more cautious approach to the fall of the Soviet Union:
…He genuinely liked Bush personally, very much liked him. I know he also institutionally felt that he was no longer President and that George Bush was now his President and he was not going to second-guess him. There was not a single instance that I know of when he was out of the office where he either publicly or even privately tried to influence President Bush to do something a certain way. I think he felt that he was no longer the President, it was somebody else’s turn, and that it doesn’t help being in there having somebody second-guessing you or criticizing you. At least with President Bush he didn’t do it. With [Bill] Clinton he did. He did a couple of carefully thought-out pieces about some of Clinton’s disastrous economic proposals, but he didn’t try to influence things with Bush or criticize him.
(Page 19)
On the “tear down this wall” speech:
I remember when he gave a speech at the Berlin Wall. … [W]hen he was going to Berlin he said, “I want to say ‘take down that wall.’” He met immense resistance from the State Department and the NSC [National Security Council]. It’s funny; there are probably a hundred people out there who have told me that they’re the ones who wrote, “Tear down this wall.” There were a handful of people on both sides of this, and the State Department was resisting it.
The only person I know who will admit that he was against it being in there was Howard Baker. Howard Baker said he was a practical politician, and you don’t ask for something that can’t happen. He didn’t want it in there, and he was overruled, and he humbly admits that he was wrong on that.
But the “tear down the wall” – there was an awful lot of back and forth. Finally the President said, “I’m doing it.” There are different versions the speechwriters gave him, but I saw the process unfold. I know that just before the speech – President Reagan would tell this story often – they took him to the Reichstag, where you could see over the wall, and they gave him a pair of big binoculars. He was looking over the wall and he could see East German police pushing the crowds back. Word had gotten out that Ronald Reagan was going to be speaking at the wall, and they really couldn’t see it. They wanted to be within hearing range of it. And the East German police were pushing them back.
It made him mad. Maybe it was part of his days as an actor, that his audience was being driven away. It was partly the fact that he had an important message and these Communist police were stopping them from hearing it. It made him mad, and that’s how he delivers the speech. He really punched that line about “Tear down this wall” because he was angry and he wasn’t hesitant about showing that. He admitted afterwards that when he saw those people pushing them back, that really got him.
… [H]e was very careful not to gloat, and he gave Gorbachev credit. Whenever he’d go out and speak, somebody would say, “Well, it looks like you beat Gorbachev.” In his question and answer he would always say, “No, this couldn’t have happened were it not for Gorbachev. Gorbachev is leading this transition.” He was very willing to let the credit be shared.
(Page 25)
On President Reagan’s post-presidential trips:
He did another trip, which we dubbed his “victory lap” to Eastern Europe, shortly after the wall came down. The first stop was Berlin. He walked through the wall and there was still East and West at the time. And they gave him, on the Eastern side, a hero’s welcome. All of it – the sight of him at the Berlin Wall with a hammer, chiseling away, and thousands of people around – was incredible. We kept totally secret where he was going to be because he didn’t want it to get out of hand if word got out that Ronald Reagan was chipping down the Berlin Wall. He went to the East and they gave him a wonderful reception. He met with the President of Germany.
(Page 17)
Lloyd Cutler, Presidential Adviser
Cutler oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On President Reagan’s legacy with respect to the Cold War:
I think he’ll be judged to have been better than we thought at the time, what the critics thought at the time. He had a sort of basic philosophy that made some sense. His standpoint on confronting the Russians probably did make some sense and probably did contribute to the fall of the Evil Empire. Having been an actor, he was somebody who was just comfortable in public and even his improvisations were very good. ... I would say it was a general period of relative peace and tranquility and the Cold War united us. On the whole, people were quite content with Reagan. If we didn’t have a two-term rule, he might very well have run and won another term, except he was so old.
(Page 37)
James Miller, Director, Office of Management and Budget
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On President Reagan’s view of the Cold War:
From the word go his focus was on the Cold War. To him it was a moral issue as well as a survival issue. He thought MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction] was mad. He thought it was totally immoral, that it was just an awful thing. He wanted to reduce the ability of one country to kill another, dramatically. It wasn’t a pie in the sky kind of thing: if we all disarm, we’ll have to be friends. It was, let’s reduce the level of the ultimate terrible consequences as a step.
(Page 88)
He thought the Soviet system was antithetical to the values Americans hold for freedom and the things that go with it. He also thought, very importantly, that it was inevitable that the Soviet system would falter and fall apart. I don’t think the Soviet system would have collapsed so dramatically on its own. But the President made the price too high for them to go on waging the war. As we’ve learned in retrospect, in almost every period Americans have misjudged the strength of the Soviet forces and the Soviet economy. They just weren’t able to compete, so they gave up. Thank God they did.
(Page 89)
Kenneth Adelman, Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On President Reagan’s strategy for defeating the Soviets in the Cold War:
He was intent that if we build up, they’re not going to be able to afford to keep up with us. A lot of people think that’s what won the Cold War. I don’t. Because when you look at Soviet defense spending, it increased about four to five percent every year through the ‘70s and pretty much continued steadily until Gorbachev started all his economic reforms that crashed the whole place. It was not the case that the Kremlin was pretty steady and then when the Reagan build-up happened in ’81 on, then the Kremlin went to match it. They didn’t match it very much; they didn’t do much different in Reagan’s time than they had done, as far as we knew, on defense spending.
So his idea of bankrupting them because they couldn’t do it, I thought that was a bad theory. People still say it all the time; I still think it’s wrong. What got them was SDI. What was it about SDI? Several things. Number one: he was running around the whole strategic doctrine that they had accepted. Our idea before SDI was: They build an SS-18, we build an MX. They build a Mobile 25, we build a Mobile missile. You go back and forth and then you negotiate. This was running around the whole thing. This was saying, “Your ballistic missiles will become less and less important over time. We’re changing all the rules of the game. What your strength has been is not going to be a strength for long. We’re going to defeat it by ourselves.”
Point number two is the obvious point: technology they could not keep up with.
(Page 60)
Frank Carlucci, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; Secretary of Defense
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On the U.S. military buildup:
I have no qualms whatsoever. I think it was essential. It hastened the end of the Cold War. … I’ve been told by any number of Russians that the buildup had a decided impact. If you were watching Gorbachev, you’d have no doubt that our military buildup convinced them, particularly the deployment of GLCMs [Ground Launched Cruise Missile] and Pershings in Europe and SDI.
Maybe the people here didn’t believe SDI, but the Soviets sure believed we could do it. Those weapons had a decided psychological impact. Had we not had the military buildup, I don’t think the Cold War would have ended as quickly as it did.
(Page 12)
Charles Wick, Director, United States Information Agency
Reagan oral history project: more | full transcript (pdf)
On the meeting at Reykavik, where Gorbachev offered to give up the majority of Soviet missiles if the U.S. gave up on the Strategic Defense Initiative, and Reagan would not agree, offering to share the “Star Wars” technology once it was perfected:
…I said, “Ronnie, you just defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War.” He said, “Charlie, I wasn’t bluffing him on Star Wars. I’m 100 percent sure how far along we can go with that. But I knew, I knew, with his having to compete if we continued, we would break him. They couldn’t possibly spend the kind of money we’re spending to create this.” I forget what the figures were, but I think our budget, or whatever they planned to spend, was damned near equal to the Soviets’ entire gross national product. I think that Gorbachev was a supreme negotiator, but that’s when he felt he was licked, because he knew that there was no way that they could compete with us, economically, in being able to fight that thing off.
…From my observations, I think that was the turning point in the Cold War. It was more than a turning point. It was a turnabout in the Cold War. Then, just as the Soviets for two years had – even those precursor guys from Gorbachev – for two years they wouldn’t have any meetings on missiles in Europe. Finally, Gorbachev says, obviously we better have those meetings. So that was part of the turnabout chronology thereafter that finally led to the end of the Cold War without firing a shot.
(Page 50)
WHITE HOUSE SPEECHWRITERS SYMPOSIUM
In Session 4 of the two-day gathering of speechwriters from the Nixon through Clinton administrations, participants Peter Robinson (Reagan speechwriter), Kenneth Khachigian (Reagan speechwriter), Walter Shapiro (Carter speechwriter), Andy Rudalevige (Dickinson College) and Michael Nelson (Rhodes College, Miller Center Non-resident Senior Fellow) discussed “The Crisis Speech and Other Major Addresses.”
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/conference/detail/4001
Peter Robinson describes the process of how the “tear down this wall” speech came to be, from the initial directive of a “foreign policy speech” and his trip to Berlin before writing it, to the State Department’s protestations and President Reagan deciding what he would say.
(Starts at 15:50, ends at 27:55)
