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Essay On Ronald Reagan's Speech

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Essay On Ronald Reagan's Speech
There comes time in the history of our world, where a quote defines and embodies the actual event. Some people remember both when both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Present George W. Bush said those famous words regarding the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, by saying, “it will be a date that will live in infamy”. Present Reagan, whom some would say had a memorable quote when it came to the end of the Cold War. On June 12, 1987 President Ronald Reagan visited West Berlin the sight of the Berlin Wall which was constructed by the Soviet Union in 1961, as a barrier between the East Berlin which was controlled by the Soviet Union and West Berlin, which was controlled by both the …show more content…
In his speech Reagan also called on Gorbachev and the Soviet Union to end the arms race, which the USSR and the United States have been in a deadlock with since the end of World War II and the Potsdam conference. President Reagan mentioned the Soviets’ SS-20 nuclear weapons and state that, “not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. " The Soviet reaction to the speech was once thought as giving an "openly provocative, war-mongering speech. " The tearing down of the Berlin Wall was one of the last few things that eventually brought the fall of the Soviet Union. The completion of the removal of the wall finished up in November of 1991. The fall of the wall an as well as the fall of the Soviet Union took the world by surprise, and the spread of democracy was in full effect. President Reagan said it best in his speech,
"As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner, 'This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.' Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

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