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Tear down this wall!
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==Response and legacy== [[File:Berlin Wall at the Reagan Library.jpg|A piece of the Berlin Wall located at the [[Ronald Reagan Presidential Library]]|thumb]] The speech received "relatively little coverage from the media", ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine wrote 20 years later.<ref name="TIME">{{cite magazine |url=http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1631828,00.html |title=20 Years After 'Tear Down This Wall' |access-date=November 15, 2020 |magazine=Time | date=June 11, 2007 | first=Romesh | last=Ratnesar}}</ref> [[John C. Kornblum|John Kornblum]], senior US diplomat in Berlin at the time of Reagan's speech, and US Ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2001, said "[The speech] wasn't really elevated to its current status until 1989, after the wall came down."<ref name="DW" /> East Germany's communist rulers were not impressed, dismissing the speech as "an absurd demonstration by a cold warrior", as later recalled by Politburo member [[Günter Schabowski]].<ref name="USATODAY">{{cite news |url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-12-reagan-speech_N.htm |title=Reagan's 'tear down this wall' speech turns 20 |access-date=February 19, 2008 |work=USA Today | date=June 12, 2007}}</ref> The Soviet press agency [[Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union|TASS]] accused Reagan of giving an "openly provocative, war-mongering speech."<ref name="raze"/> Former West German Chancellor [[Helmut Kohl]] said he would never forget standing near Reagan when he challenged Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. "He was a stroke of luck for the world, especially for Europe."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-07-reagan-world_x.htm|title=Reagan remembered worldwide for his role in ending Cold War division|work=[[USA Today]] |date=June 7, 2004 |first=Jason |last=Keyser}}</ref> In an interview, Reagan said that the East German police did not allow people to come close to the wall, which prevented the citizens from experiencing the speech at all.<ref name="TIME"/> [[Peter Robinson (speechwriter)|Peter Robinson]], the White House [[speech writer]] who drafted the address, said that the phrase "tear down this wall" was inspired by a conversation with Ingeborg Elz of West Berlin; in a conversation with Robinson, Elz remarked, "If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of ''Glasnost'' and ''perestroika'' he can prove it by getting rid of this wall."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/summer/berlin.html|first = Peter|last = Robinson|author-link = Peter Robinson (speechwriter)|publisher = [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]]|date = Summer 2007|volume = 39|title = 'Tear Down This Wall': How Top Advisers Opposed Reagan's Challenge to Gorbachev – But Lost}}</ref> In a September 2012 article in ''[[The Atlantic]]'', Liam Hoare pointed to the many reasons for the tendency for American media to focus on the significance of this particular speech, without weighing the complexity of the events as they unfolded in both East and West Germany and the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite web|publisher = [[The Atlantic]]|date = September 20, 2012 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/lets-please-stop-crediting-ronald-reagan-for-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall/262647/|title=Let's Please Stop Crediting Ronald Reagan for the Fall of the Berlin Wall|first = Liam | last = Hoare}}</ref> Author [[James Mann (writer)|James Mann]] disagreed with both critics like Hoare, who saw Reagan's speech as having no real effect, and those who praised the speech as key to shaking Soviet confidence. In a 2007 opinion article in ''[[The New York Times]]'', he put the speech in the context of previous Reagan overtures to the Soviet Union, such as the [[Reykjavík Summit|Reykjavik summit]] of the previous year, which had very nearly resulted in an agreement to eliminate American and Soviet nuclear weapons entirely. He characterized the speech as a way for Reagan to assuage his right-wing critics that he was still tough on communism, while also extending a renewed invitation to Gorbachev to work together to create "the vastly more relaxed climate in which the Soviets sat on their hands when the wall came down." Mann claimed that Reagan "wasn't trying to land a knockout blow on the Soviet regime, nor was he engaging in mere political theater. He was instead doing something else on that damp day in Berlin 20 years [before Mann's article] – he was helping to set the terms for the end of the cold war."<ref name="nyt-mann">{{cite news|last1=Mann|first1=James|title=Tear Down That Myth|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/opinion/10mann.html|access-date=May 1, 2017|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=June 10, 2007}}</ref> In November 2019, a bronze statue of Reagan was unveiled at the US embassy, near the site of the speech, after the Berlin authorities had refused one to be placed in the city.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/world/europe/ronald-reagan-berlin-wall.html|title=President Reagan Returns to Berlin, this time in Bronze|work=New York Times|date=November 8, 2019|access-date=November 10, 2019|first=Melissa|last=Eddy}}</ref>
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