In Berlin, Obama speaks to more than 200,000

"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment," Obama told the throngs. "This is our time."

Obama's campaign staged the event to maximize its visual impact. Cameras captured the scene from helicopters. Aides to the candidate hoisted photographers and reporters on a cherry picker to survey the view.

For his arrival, the Illinois senator, dressed in a business suit, walked alone around the Victory Column, a 226-foot pillar near the center of the park. It is an ornate monument to Prussian war triumphs of the 19th century, including the 1871 defeat of France, the country Obama will visit today.

The crowd roared as Obama made his way several hundred feet down a makeshift runway to the lectern where he stood for the speech. Police carrying rifles patrolled on a high ledge of the Victory Column.

The speech was the dramatic showpiece of a nine-day overseas trip that has taken Obama to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. After meeting in Paris today with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama will travel to London, his last stop.

In Berlin, Obama met Thursday morning with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The agenda included Pakistan, Middle East peace talks, trade and the economy.

Before his arrival, Merkel had complained publicly about Obama considering the Brandenburg Gate as a location for his speech.

"I have always said that I think that the Brandenburg Gate is a good site for a speech of a U.S. president, or other presidents," she said Wednesday. "But a campaigning speech should not take place [there].

"This might be seen as a bit old-fashioned, and there might be different opinions."

In the end, Obama's crowd was so big that it reached the gate.

His advisors hoped the rousing reception -- Berlin police put the crowd size at 215,000 -- would illustrate that Obama had the potential to improve America's image abroad. He touched on that theme in his speech.

"In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help us make it right, has become all too common," he said.

Indeed, polls show that many Europeans loathe President Bush and would welcome Obama as his successor. "He's young, he's active, he wants change, and nobody can do worse than Bush," said Alexander Bobenko, 48, a Berlin mathematician in the crowd.

But critics, led by Obama's Republican rival John McCain, said the Democrat's speech showed that he was presumptuous about the presidency.

"While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a 'citizen of the world,' John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

McCain's campaign also hammered Obama for canceling his planned visit Friday morning to U.S. military personnel at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Obama "decided out of respect for these servicemen and -women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign," spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

"Barack Obama is wrong," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded. "It is never 'inappropriate' to visit our men and women in the military."