After all that had gone on over the last forty years, a lot of Germans found themselves asking, "Who am I?" Reagan uses this speech to try to help answer that question—at least for the Western part of the country—but first, let's make it clear what Germany was not.
Germany was not the winning team. They'd pretty much had their butts handed to them in both world wars and were now being supervised by the kids they'd tried to bully.
Germany was not a superpower. The post-WWII international bigwigs made sure of that after the whole Nazis-and-death-camps fiasco. No way was Germany getting all powerful again.
Also, for the last forty years or so, Germany was not one country. It was two countries, divided by walls both physical and ideological.
So how does Reagan attempt to give these poor confused people a sense of identity in his "Speech at the Berlin Wall"? By aligning them with the West, of course.
Questions About Identity
- How might Germans' sense of identity be different if they'd won World War II?
- Why did the Soviet Union and the Allies seize control of Germany in the first place? Why couldn't they just be all, "Don't do that again," and let it go?
- Should the U.S. have taken a more aggressive approach toward destroying the Berlin Wall and reunifying the German people?
Chew on This
It's Germany's own fault they're all split up; they should've kept Hitler from going bonkers and trying to take over the world.
It's the West's moral responsibility to help Germany come to terms with its post-war situation and help them find footing in this new international atmosphere.