For those of us old enough to remember the events, no, not at all.

The story is of course much more complicated, and from my recollection the events in Eastern Europe really got started with Solidarity in Poland sometime before.

But we also know that Reagan was the first US president who was determined to end the USSR, not "contain" it (compare to e.g. G. H. W. Bush's later Chicken Kiev speech), and we did all sorts of things to help bring that about, and this included parts of our civil society like our much more industrial and to the right back then unions.

The actual events resulting in the very quick fall were something of a surprise, we didn't expect that, especially how relatively peaceful it was. But it was something we'd strived to help bring about.

The word "many" leads me to believe that this is the author's opinion without substance, and even with evidence at best ad populum.

I recently read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by J. Loewen [1], and it hits on just this, being the "heroification" of American leaders. I wouldn't doubt that this is what was the popular teaching in K-12 US.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/074...

I think this story is wrong on many accounts.

For starters, I don't think many Americans understand any details other than the anecdote that there was a wall in Germany, and it came down. Please, rest assured east Germans, we have done worse than steal your achievement- we don't give it any real thought anymore.

Americans glibly joke about the fear culture around communism from that time, but we have no awareness of the irony of our current fears of isis or Ebola.

Reagan's speech at the wall was iconic, but you really need to be over 35 to be aware of it.

I am an former Est Germany. I am older than 35. I can assure you, the Reagan speech did noting.

There where only one or two important speeches, may be 3 if you count Kennedy in.

One of the most important was, when Willy Brand had its visit in East Germany. The only important visit by a western politician in East Germany. The other one, which was not really a speech, but very important, was the one by Genscher for the release of the people into West Germany after occupying the West German embassy in Praha, CZ.

It was clearly more directed at the USSR and specifically Gorbachev. Khrushchev and Ulbricht had unwisely created the concrete, so to speak, symbol of the evil empire, a very visible wall dividing a historic, major city. Where families trying to cross it were shot at, often successfully.

It had to have been terribly embarrassing to Gorbachev to be called out like that, and it strongly cut against many of his and the USSR's themes, e.g. if it's so great, why do you need that wall keeping people inside of your socialist worker's paradise?

Getting back to the 1989 fall, something stayed the hands of the USSR, unlike Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. I believe it's impossible to make an honest case that Reagan had nothing to do with that.

Respectfully, I think you are mistaken to say that Regan's speech did nothing. The reuse of Regan saying "tear down this wall" in various pieces of remix culture is evidence of the iconic nature of the speech.

By no means am I arguing that these words literally tore down a wall. But if anyone can argue that a speech can ever be important, this one was, at least for American culture.

So my point here is that this author is punching at a straw man. I don't know anyone who believes this speech itself contributed to the felling of the wall. It was an event in a much larger storyline that was bigger than the wall itself: the cold war.

Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in '63 is much more present in German culture then Reagan's in '87. If anything, we associate Gorbatchev's Perestroika process as the beginning of the end of the socialist system.

I have never heard anyone imply that the US tore down the wall, so to speak. Common opinion seems to be that East Germany was shitty, and people wanted to leave, and with the changes from the USSR, popular movements made it fall.

I feel same about that. The Americans often have issues with correct teaching of history.

If that's not a slanderous statement of 300 million people I don't know what is. Which Americans are you referring to? And in what way do they have a worse understanding of history than billions of other people?

No. That's not a view that I've heard over the years. We hear that Reagan's policies led to severe economic pressure on the USSR which in turn led them to have a more hands-off position with the Eastern-Bloc countries.

There's an American conservative sect that believes Reagan was personally responsible for the fall of Communism, including both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the USSR. I don't know just how common it is, but it's not entirely uncommon among the "government is evil, taxation is theft, global warming is a hoax" fringe crowd.

Name some members of it.

Of course not counting those of us who note, as I noted in another posting in this sub-thread, that Reagan just happened to be the very first President who tried to end vs. "contain" the USSR. I.e. the difference between giving it a strong push into "the dustbin of history" as he put it, vs. "personally responsible".

My father, for one.

I think you'll have to do better than that to establish the existence of a "sect". I.e. you need to name some of its leaders, the ones making statements, speeches, etc. propagating this program.

I know he didn't come up with this idea independently. I haven't paid enough attention to know precisely who it came from, but given his reading and listening habits, I'd expect the names to be found on a list of contributors to National Review and the list of top talk radio hosts.

You seem awfully defensive about this, given that I said nothing that indicates you are a member, or indeed that anyone in particular is a member until you asked. Are you that uncomfortable with the idea that there are crazy people in the world who hold some opinions similar to your own? That's true of all of us.

Defensive? Perhaps that comes from being viciously slandered and libeled for 4 decades (starting from when I became politically aware in the very early '70s; heck, I'm old enough to remember when the "scientific consensus" was that the earth was entering an ice age and it was axiomatic it all our fault). This brush is broadly used against everyone on "the right"; to bring it back to this discussion and e.g. the impression flohofwoe got as a teenager behind the Iron Curtain in the '80s, by supporting and voting for Reagan we demonstrated a desire to kill those behind it in nuclear hellfire.

Based on my knowledge of the right, I did't know of any such "sect", your language explicitly said there's a specific group of "crazy people" with this set of beliefs. Except you can't identify any of them besides your father, and no one can claim complete clarity in viewing their parents.

Believe me or don't, I really don't care. If you choose to take my post as libel against you, that's your right, but given that I don't know you and apparently haven't described your beliefs, it takes some amazing mental gymnastics to pull that off, and that's on you, not me.

You seem to know a lot about the "government is evil, taxation is theft, global warming is a hoax" fringe crowd, but when questioned, you refer only to your father. You're extrapolating to a whole group of people from a personal family anecdote. Your comment is devoid of data and that's why such drivel is not appreciated.

Yeah, I know a fair amount of what that crowd believes, as a result of lots of exposure, direct and indirect, to the aforementioned talk radio and magazine. No, I can't name names. So what? I couldn't name any hosts on Fox News or CNN, but I can state with confidence from what I've seen of them that a lot of them are full of crap.