The Berlin Wall Speech was delivered by United States President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987. The speech is commonly known by a key line from the middle part: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had encircled West Berlin since 1961.

West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1990, the territory was claimed by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), despite being entirely surrounded by East Germany (GDR). The legality of this claim was contested by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. However, West Berlin de facto aligned itself politically with the FRG from May 1949 and was thereafter treated as a de facto city-state of that country. After 1949, it was directly or indirectly represented in the institutions of the FRG, and most of its residents were citizens of the FRG.