"And according to Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and the history consultant for CBS News, many observers saw the speech as "disastrous

"And according to Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and the history consultant for CBS News, many observers saw the speech as "disastrous." Communist leaders were critical of the remarks, and even West Berlin's then-mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, was wary. "We were all a little more skeptical than American politicians -- the significance and the chances of tearing down the wall, there we were skeptical," he recalled in an interview years later. "It was not well-received within the foreign policy community or the pundit class," Brinkley said, in an interview with CBS. "Many people called foul." As Brinkley notes, however, history has been kind to the president's speech. "It's seen as a turning point in Cold War," he said. "I think Reagan's speech bolstered the morale of the pro-democracy movement in East Germany." "There was a movement that was growing and building toward liberalization and this gave great impetus to it in the aftermath," added Duberstein. "Even though people in the Soviet Union thought the speech was provocative, it worked." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remembering-reagans-tear-down-this-wall-speech-25-years-later/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remembering-reagans-tear-down-t...