dobb in the next minutes place his speech in the final context of his final years in relation shi gorbachev and argue its impossible to have the true significance of tear down this wall without the relationship between the two most powerful men in the world. it was this relationship, this partnership, that was the single biggest reason why the berlin wall fell when it did. ronald reagan -- of communism and the way it suppressed the human spirit, and in him no starker embodiment of that tyranny than the berlin wall. he liked to say throughout his clear it's the only wall that was ever built to keep people in rather than keep people out. as early as 1967 while still governor of california he said that the u.s. should have knocked down the barbed wire separating east and west berlin the moment the communist put it up in 1961. when he visited west ber flynn 1978 before running for president was told the story of an east germ's teenager killed trying to crawl over the wall in 1962. the border guards, reagan was told, left this young man unattended for hours as an example while he bled to death.