Tear Down This Wall: Compare and Contrast
Tear Down This Wall: Compare and Contrast
Nikita Khrushchev, Address to the UN General Assembly (September 23, 1960)
Khrushchev delivered this speech almost thirty years before Reagan urged Gorbachev to tear down the wall. In fact, when this speech was made, the Berlin Wall wasn't even up yet. But if we really wa...
John F. Kennedy, Remarks at the Rudolph Wilde Platz ("Ich bin ein Berliner"), Berlin (June 26, 1963)
JFK made this awesome little gem of a speech in 1963. Reagan's Berlin Wall speech was given in 1987. Two POTUSes visited the city of Berlin between 1963 and 1987. So why is this speech important? B...
Richard von Weizsacker, Speech during the Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the End of the War in Europe and of National-Socialist Tyranny (May 8, 1985)
How did West Germany feel about everything that was going on? As former German Prez von Weizsacker's twelve-page speech (seriously, it's a long one; pull up a comfy chair) tells us, it's complicate...
Mikhail Gorbachev, Resignation Speech (December 25, 1991)
A wall collapses in Germany and, bim, bam, boom, the leader of the Soviet Union is out of a job—and a Soviet Union. Okay, maybe that's a wee bit of an oversimplification.Gorbachev never wanted th...
Margaret Thatcher, Speech to Joint Houses of Congress (February 20, 1985)
The Iron Lady made her Congressional debut in 1985 with this soul-stirrer of a speech. Britain's Prime Minister was already known around the world as a staunch anti-communist kind of girl; in this...