It’s one of the most recognizable images in human history. A Soviet soldier stands atop the ruins of the German parliament, clutching a pole as the red banner with its hammer and sickle unfurls over a smoke-filled Berlin. You’ve seen it in textbooks. You’ve seen it in documentaries. It signals the end. The final, crushing defeat of the Third Reich. But honestly, the story behind raising the flag over the Reichstag is a lot messier than the pristine, heroic image suggests. It wasn't just a spontaneous moment caught by a lucky passerby. It was a calculated, dangerous, and technically "staged" event that happened after the real fighting had already peaked.
The Chaos of April 30, 1945
Berlin was a slaughterhouse. By late April, the Red Army had the city surrounded, but the German defenders were fighting for every basement and every subway tunnel. The Reichstag wasn't actually the seat of the Nazi government—Hitler had moved things elsewhere years prior—but to Stalin, it was the "inner sanctum." It was the ultimate prize. Taking it meant the war was over in the eyes of the world.
The first time Soviet troops actually managed to get a flag up was around 10:40 PM on April 30. It was dark. Pitch black, actually, except for the flashes of artillery and the orange glow of fires. Mikhail Minin and three other soldiers scrambled onto the roof. They didn't have a fancy flagpole. They used a piece of cloth and fastened it to one of the statues on the parapet.
The problem? No one saw it. There were no photographers there because, frankly, people were still busy dying in the hallways below. The Germans were still in the basement. They didn't surrender just because a piece of red fabric was waving in the wind. In fact, the Germans managed to knock that first flag down the next morning during a counter-attack.
Yevgeny Khaldei and the "Second" Flag
Enter Yevgeny Khaldei. He was a photographer for TASS, the Soviet news agency. He arrived at the Reichstag on May 2, 1945, carrying a large flag that his uncle, a tailor, had sewn from three red tablecloths. He was looking for his "Iwo Jima" moment. He had seen Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the Americans on Mount Suribachi and wanted something that carried that same weight for the Soviet Union.
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He found three soldiers: Aleksei Kovalev, Abdulkhakim Ismailov, and Leonid Gorychev.
Kovalev was the one actually holding the flag in the famous shot. It’s a terrifying photo if you look at the height. He’s leaning out over a sheer drop, held only by the ankles of Ismailov. Khaldei snapped 36 shots on his Leica. It was perfect. It was triumphant. It was exactly what the Kremlin needed to signal total victory to the masses back in Moscow.
The Secret Edits (1940s Photoshop)
When Khaldei got back to Moscow, he noticed a problem. A big one.
Looking at the negatives, he saw that Ismailov—the soldier supporting the flag-bearer—was wearing two watches. One on each wrist. In the Soviet military, that was a one-way ticket to a firing squad or a Gulag for "looting." You couldn't have the "liberators" appearing as common thieves in the official record of history.
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Khaldei took a needle and literally scratched the watch off the right wrist on the negative. He also added more smoke to the background. He wanted it to look more dramatic, more like the heat of battle, even though the heavy fighting at the Reichstag had largely subsided by the time he took the picture.
Who actually gets the credit?
For decades, the Soviet government maintained that the soldiers in the photo were Meliton Kantaria and Mikhail Yegorov. Why? Politics. Kantaria was Georgian, just like Joseph Stalin. It made for a better narrative. The real guys—Kovalev, Ismailov, and Gorychev—were largely erased from the official story for years.
It’s a weird nuance of history. We have the "official" heroes and the "actual" heroes, and in the case of raising the flag over the Reichstag, they aren't the same people. It doesn't diminish the bravery it took to get into that building, which was a deathtrap of snipers and grenades, but it shows how much of our historical memory is curated.
Why the Reichstag?
People often ask why the Soviets were so obsessed with this specific building. The Reichstag had been a shell since the 1933 fire. It wasn't a military command center. But in the psychology of war, symbols are more important than floor plans. To the Soviet soldier, the Reichstag represented the heart of the beast that had invaded their motherland, killed 27 million of their people, and burned their villages.
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Taking that roof was a catharsis.
When you look at the walls of the Reichstag today, you can still see the graffiti left by Soviet soldiers. They carved their names, their hometowns, and their curses into the stone. It’s a haunting contrast to the glass dome that sits there now.
Lessons from a Photo
History isn't a single frame. It's the messy stuff that happens before and after the shutter clicks. The photo of the flag over the Reichstag is "fake" in the sense that it was a reenactment, but it's "real" in the sense that it captured the literal and emotional end of the most destructive war in human history.
If you want to truly understand this moment, look past the flag. Look at the smoke. Think about the soldier holding the ankles of his comrade. Think about the guy who had to scratch a watch off a negative in a darkroom because he was afraid of a dictator.
How to explore this history further:
- Visit the Reichstag in Berlin: You can book tours to see the preserved Soviet graffiti. It’s the most direct link to the soldiers who were actually there.
- Compare the Negatives: Look up the original, unedited Khaldei photos alongside the published versions. The differences in smoke density and the "missing" watch are a masterclass in early propaganda.
- Read Antony Beevor's "Berlin: The Downfall 1945": It provides the most granular, day-by-day account of the actual combat that happened inside the building, which was far more brutal than any photo can convey.