Flag on the Reichstag        

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Contents 1 Creating his Iwo Jima 2 Who raised the flag? 3 Yevgeny Khaldei 4 Photographer of the Soviet Army 5 After the War 6 Credit he deserved			This image is in the public domain
Picture Taken On: May 2, 1945	Place: On top of the German Reichstag building in Berlin	Behind the Camera: Red Army photographer Yevgeny Khaldei	Picture Summary: The Soviet flag being raised over the German Reichstag building by Meliton Kantaria

Last Updated on 2007-02-17 by Dean Lucas

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In the closing days of World War II the Communist Russian Red Army smashed it’s way into Berlin. In the Nazi capital, the German army was overwhelmed into pockets of resistance that either surrendered or fought fanatically to the last man. On the front lines with the Red Army was Yevgeny Khaldei, Soviet war photographer. In the future, he would say that he spent every 1,481 days of the Russian-German war covering the Soviet battle for the motherland, but in Nazi Berlin he was looking for one thing, his Iwo Jima shot. Khaldei had seen the pictures of American GI’s raising the flag over the Japanese volcano and before the war ended he wanted to snap a similar scene in Berlin.

A colorized version of one of the shots taken that day

Creating his Iwo Jima

Choosing the German Parliament building, The Reichstag, as his Iwo Jima, Khaldei moved to create his Soviet Propaganda masterpiece. With frustration he discovered he had a place to raise the USSR colors but no Soviet flag. Jumping on a plane back to Moscow he was able to convince employees of his news agency to give him three red tablecloths normally used for official functions. With his uncle they spent the night sewing on stars, hammers and sickles before Khaldei returned to Berlin. Even though the Reichstag had been abandoned since the fire of February 1933, which allowed Hitler to take power, it was still heavily defended.

Who raised the flag?

A painting in a Russian museum showing Mikhail Petrovich Minin and his strike team raising the flag

The first time the flag was raised, the Reichstag still had some resisting German fighters inside. Even with the hold-out defenders a small Soviet four man strike team was able to storm the building and make their way to the top. They chose the mounted statue of Germania, a women representing Germany, on the roof of the Reichstag to attach their banner. At first they were going to use their belts to hold it in place but then noticed that the crown on the statue had holes where a flag pole would fit. So on at 10:40 PM on April 30, 1945 a 27 years old Mikhail Petrovich Minin climbed the statue and inserted the flag in Germania's crown. This first time the flag was raised wasn't captured on film.

The next day the German troops attacked when they saw the Soviet Victory Flag flying above. Only with Soviet enforcements was the Red Army able to beat off the counter-attack. While the Nazi’s didn’t force the Soviets from the building they did manage to bring down the flag. The Germans trapped in the basement finally surrendered and on the morning of May 2, 1945 they left the building under a White Flag. It was on this same day, while the German’s surrendered below, Khaldei and some men found their way to the slippery blood soaked roof and posed what would become one of the most famous pictures of World War II, the raising of red Hammer and Sickle above the Reichstag. The soldiers in the image were chosen for political reasons. Meliton Kantaria to hold the flag and supporting Kantaria is Mikhail Yegorov. Kantaria, a Georgian sergeant, was picked to please Stalin who himself was from Georgia and Yegorov a Russian fighter represented the motherland.

Yevgeny Khaldei

Yevgeny Khaldei was born into an Ukrainian Jewish family on March 23 1917 in Donbass, a Ukrainian steel town. He was still an infant when his mother was killed in an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1918. A true survivor, during the Soviet designed famines that killed millions in the Ukraine, Khaldei learned to eat grass to stay alive. Despite Stalin setting in motion the events that led to millions of his Ukrainian countrymen dying in the Famine, he was still loyal to the state.

From a young age Khaldei was fascinated by photography. As a young teenager he built his first camera from a lens of his grandmother's glasses. Soon his pictures started to appear in a local paper the, Socialist Donbass. A few years later he would join the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) as a press photographer. On assignment, photographing children reciting poetry, as part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the famous poet Mikhail Lermontov, he first heard the news that Germany had invaded. One of his most famous pieces, "War is announced" was taken on that day on June 22, 1941.

Photographer of the Soviet Army

The original Picture

The edited verison with smoke added

Commissioned into the Soviet army as a lieutenant he was sent out to photograph the war. Sent into the field with just 160 feet of film because his editor thought that Hitler would be defeated within two weeks. Khaldei was first stationed in the Arctic city of Murmansk with a squadron of British pilots sent to protect the Soviet Union’s lifeline to the West, the Arctic convoys. As the war progressed he shot the liberation of major Soviet cities including Kerch and Sebastapol. At Yalta he captured the Allies leaders planning post-Nazi Europe. He was part of the red wave that swept across Europe and crushed Berlin. His shot of the Soviet Hammer and Sickle flag over the Reichstag is one of the most significant of World War II. Symbolizing Soviet victory and revenge; not only did Khaldei immortalize the moment: he created it.

In his heroic Soviet propaganda style he is probably the only journalist to arrange, choreograph and then capture such a symbolic event. He defended posing most of his pictures by insisting that the shot taken should match the importance of the event. As was the case with many Soviet and other journalists during the war, once the picture was taken and developed, that did not mean it was finished. Censors at the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) noticed that on the wrists of the solider in the picture there was not one but two watches indicating a common practice by all parties during World War II, looting. The officials thought the sight of looting members of the Red Army would look badly and told Khaldei to edit them out. Not stopping with the watches, Khaldei also added smoke to the background to add to the drama of a wartime shot. In a recent Art show commemorating his work only one of his shots was actual taken during combat and not posed. In defense of Mr. Khaldei he might have been too busy to actually take pictures during combat. Unlike their fellow Allied journalists, Soviet reporters carried arms and where soldiers first, journalists second.

After the War

After the surrender of Germany, Khaldei covered many events including the Nazi war-crimes tribunals, the Nuremberg trials. He worked with TASS until 1948, when increased Stalin sanctioned antisemitism of the time or his support of Tito, who went against Stalin, forced him from the job. He struggled to find work as a lot of Jews did during that period, until Stalin died in 1953. After Stalin’s death, the antisemitism was brushed under the Soviet carpet and he was able to find work again at the Russian Newspaper giant, Pravda. While it was official state doctrine that everyone in the USSR was equal and there was no race problem like America, Khaldei still felt the ever-present antisemitism that has dogged Russian culture for centuries. He was allowed to take pictures of Russian musicians but forbidden to give coverage to Jewish artists. These double standards continued until finally in 1972 when he was again, because of his background, forced from his job at Pravda. Even though Russian antisemitism caused the death of his mother and forced him from two jobs he still supports the Soviet communist dream:

Credit he deserved

Antisemitism almost buried Khaldei into oblivion as his photos including his shot of the Soviet Flag over the bombed out ruins of Berlin were published without credit. It was only till after the cold war and the collapse of communism that professors Alexander and Alice Nakhimovsky came across his name in the Russian archives and created a book showcasing his work, WITNESS TO HISTORY: The Photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei. Now the Khaldei Exhibition has a retrospective in major cities all over the world. The book even led to a movie about his life, Evgueni Khaldei: Photographer Under Stalin. Before he was discovered, Khaldei was surviving on a $35 monthly pension from the State. Just after the film was finished on Oct 6, 1997 at the age of 80 he died. He never made any money from royalties of his work but his son-in-law Yuri Bibichev said Khaldei didn’t care, "He was glad that what he had done over 80 years was of use to someone".

Last Updated by Dean Lucas

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