At the height of the cold war, Reagan spoke in front of the Berlin Wall and challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”
The speech didn’t make a lot of waves at the time. It wasn’t until two years later – when the wall came down – that people recognized it as significant.
"It emerged out of the dust, so to speak, and people were saying, 'Look at that. Ronald Reagan foresaw this. He was the one to give it its last push,' " John Kornblum, the ranking American diplomat in Berlin, told USA Today in 2007.
In the speech, Reagan argued that the US arms buildup was what would make peace negotiations possible, because the US would be coming to the table from a position of strength.
