On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan delivered his historic Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany. The Brandenburg Gate, a Berlin landmark, had been commissioned by Friedrich Wilhelm II as a symbol of peace. Construction was completed in 1791. Ironically, in 1961 the Brandenburg Gate was built into the infamous Berlin Wall, a very real brick-and-mortar line of demarcation between democratic West Germany and Communist East Germany that became a hated symbol of the Cold War. While most of Reagan’s remarks from this speech have largely been forgotten, one line—“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”—has echoed through the intervening decades as indicative of Reagan’s implacable opposition to Communism. Reagan arrived in Berlin at a time of heightened tensions, and some Europeans demonstrated against him, largely because he was perceived as a war hawk. The U.S. decision to station short-range tactical nuclear weapons in Europe to deter Soviet aggression had been highly controversial.