Before and after – Reichstag Berlin

I took part in a Battle of Berlin walking tour last Sunday and found the spot where the Soviets raised their flag over the Reichstag at the culmination of the battle.

Towards the final stages of the Battle of Berlin the Soviets were desperate to plant the Soviet flag onto the Reichstag building, as they believed this would effectively hail the end of the war in Europe (and symbolise the final victory of Communism over Nazism).

To motivate Soviet soldiers during the frenzied fighting in the latter stages of the Battle of Berlin, officers handed out Soviet flags to soldiers so that they could secure their place in history by being the soldier to plant the flag on the building.

Stalin was equally eager to see a Soviet flag flying from the Reichstag by May 1st in order to coincide with May Day, and such was the pressure from above to plant a flag on the building that officers ordered Red Army planes to drop flags onto the roof whilst the building was still being fought over, in the hope that at least one flag would stick.

Many photos were taken of various flags being raised over the building, with some attempts turning out to be a bit of a damp squib (photo 2).

But Yevgeny Khaldei’s photo (photo 1) of Private Kovalev from Kazakhstan raising the flag on May 2nd caught the public’s eye when it was published in Ogniok magazine back in Russia on May the 13th.

Khaldei’s photo looked suitably ‘epic’ because it had been heavily doctored to include dramatic smoke in the background. But the artistic photoshopping didn’t stop there however, because a needle was also used to remove an extra watch clearly visible on the right arm of one of the flag-raising soldiers pictured in the photo. After all, a soldier wearing multiple watches might have given the impression that Soviet soldiers were busy ransacking Berlin and taking watches from the locals (spolier alert: they were).

Nowadays, you won’t find any Hammer & Sickle flags flying from this side of the Reichstag, just an EU flag (**insert satirical joke here**).