Berlin Wall a notable moment of the Cold War and a high point of the New Frontier. It was a great morale boost for West Berliners, who lived in an exclave deep inside East Germany and feared a possible East German occupation. In a speech at the Brandenburg Gate commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin on 12 June 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev, then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to tear down the Wall as a symbol of increasing freedom in the Eastern Bloc: In June 1989 the Hungarian government began dismantling the
The Fall of Berlin (film) Radzinsky added "The Fall of Berlin" "further developed the theme", as it ends "with an apotheosis: Stalin arrives by plane... In the white attire of an angel descending from the clouds", he "reveals himself to the expectant humans... They glorify the Messiah in all tongues." Russian historian Alexander Prokhorov believed the film was influenced by Nazi propaganda films. Author John Riley claimed the scene in which Stalin's plane arrives in Berlin – which was fictional; Stalin never flew to the German capital, let alone on the day of the capture of the Reichstag – was modeled after Hitler's landing in