On June 12, 1987 President Ronald Reagan, standing before the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with the Berlin Wall looming behind him, issued his famous challenge to the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” President Reagan’s words that day have been credited with placing considerable pressure on the Soviet…
Tag: Berlin Wall
The Most Accurate Prediction in History?
Twenty years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and with it fell the Soviet Union and its empire of tyranny throughout Eastern Europe. In August 1977, the British journalist and broadcaster Bernard Levin had predicted what eventually happened. He was right about why it would happen, how it would happen, and…
Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989
Today marks an important and influential event in European and global history. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is a defining moment symbolizing not only the path to German reunification, but a genuine psychological end to the Cold War and WWII particularly for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe – who had fallen under…
Sopron, Hungary: the picnic that changed the world
Twenty-five years ago, a diplomatic picnic helped bring down communism in Eastern Europe. Who would have thought that in the end the Iron Curtain would be brought down not with a bang, but with basketfuls of sandwiches and hot dogs? And yet that is what happened. On August 19, 1989, at the instigation of the Austrian Euro…
e-Storia 