26th June 1963: JFK declares ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’

On the 26th June 1963 American President John F. Kennedy declared US support for West Berlin with the phrase, "Ich bin ein Berliner" – I am a Berliner – 22 months after the Soviet-supported DDR, more commonly known as East Germany, built the Berlin Wall. Berlin had been a focal point for Cold War tensions ever since the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945 divided the city – and the rest of Germany – between the four victorious powers at the end of the Second World War. When the USSR imposed...