| Yevgeny Khaldei (March 23, 1917 – October 6, 1997) titled this photo “Raising a Flag over the Reichstag.” It was taken during the Battle of Berlin on May 2, 1945. Khaldei was inspired by Joe Rosenthal’s iconic flag raising photo at Iwo Jima, and traveled to Berlin with the intention of capturing a similar photo. Nazis defended the Reichstag bitterly, despite it being out of use since the February 1933 fire. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin (December 18, 1878 – March 5, 1953) decreed that the Reichstag be taken by May 1, for International Workers’ Day, but a flag raised the night of April 30 wasn’t photographed, and Germans removed it. When the Reichstag was secured on May 2, Khaldei took a Soviet flag his uncle made for the purpose and asked 3 soldiers to hoist it. He took the photo and returned to Moscow. Khaldei made edits to the photo. He removed a watch – which may have actually been a compass – from 1 man’s wrist. He also added smoke for effect, which was a fairly common Soviet practice during the war. It was published in the May 13, 1945, issue of Ogoniok (“Spark”) Magazine. The photo caused a worldwide sensation and has become an iconic World War II photo. The identity of the soldiers in the photo, and even Khaldei’s identity, was withheld to keep the focus of the war on the average Soviet Red Army soldier and more importantly to Stalin, on his own self-image as liberator and victor. Officially, eventually the flag raising was credited to Georgian Meliton Kantaria (October 5, 1920 – December 27, 1993), Ukrainian Alexei Berest (March 9, 1921 – November 4, 1970) and Russian Mikhail Yegorov (May 5, 1923 – June 20, 1975). Unofficially, Khaldei created the flag raising to Dagestani Abdulkhakim Ismailov (July 1, 1916 – February 17, 2010); Russian Aleksey Kovalev (May 10, 1925 – died September 7, 1997); and Minsk, Belarussia resident Leonid Gorychev, nom de guerre Aleksei Goryachev (???? – ????), who is not in some shots of the flag raising. Some sources say that Berest was excluded from the list of soldiers recommended to receive citations for their role in the event because General Zhukov did not like political officers. Yet another suggests that it was because Stalin did not like Ukrainians. It is also possible that Berest’s role was later cleansed from the popular memory because, after the war, Berest found himself at odds with the Soviet government and was sentenced to a labor camp. Regardless of the reason, it was Yegorov and Kantaria who were named “Heroes of the Soviet Union” and are most celebrated for the accomplishment of raising the flag. Ismailov’s death was worldwide news in western sources in 2010 however. In 1996, official reproductions of the “Banner of Victory” were authorized, 1 at the 16:9 proportions of the 1945 flag, and another at the 1:2 proportions of the then-current Russian flag. These reproductions were set aside in favor of new reproductions approved by Vladimir Putin’s administration in 2007. These reproductions are displayed at Victory Day commemorations on May 8 every year. The original is on display in Moscow’s Central Museum of the Armed Forces. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2123.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.57 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2983 x 4295 |
| Photographer | Yevgeny Khaldei |
| Photographer Title | Ogoniok |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | May 2, 1945 |
| Location | Reichstag |
| City | Berlin |
| State or Province | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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