The above image of the hoisting of the Red Flag over the Reichstag 2 May 1945, has come to represent the total victory of Soviet Russia however the red flag was actually first raised on the Reichstag on April 30 as the Red Army and the Nazis were still fighting for control of the building . Erected in 1894, the Reichstag's architecture was magnificent for it's time. The building contributed much to German history and was considered by the Red Army the symbol of their enemy, and the heart of Nazi Germany
On May 2, two days after Hitler had killed himself and the same day that General Helmuth Weidling, the last remaining commander of the Nazi forces defending the German capital, ordered ' the immediate cessation of resistance, and thus surrendering the city to the Red Army, Yevgeny Khalder a 28 year old -photojournalist and Red Army naval officer (1917 -1997) was ready to record the symbolic image of Germany's capitulation after days of intnense fighting.
The above photograph was actually staged for propaganda purposes, but nonetheless became an iconic symbol of the Soviet Union's triumphant victory over Nazi Germany.Next to Joe Rosenthal's photo of raising the flag on Iwo Jima, Khaldei's photo, is perhaps the most famous of Worf War 11, But unlike Rosenthal's his was both staged and doctored. Noting the publicity the Iwo Jima photos had recieved , Soviet officials, ordered Khaldei to fly from Moscow to Berlin in order to take a similar photo that would symbolise the Soviet victory over Germany. Khaldei carried with him a large flag, sewn from three tablecloths for this very purpose, by his uncle. When Khaldei arrived in Berlin he had considered a number of settings for the photo, including the Brabdenburg Gate and Temelhof Airport but he decided on the Reichstag, even though Soviet soldiers had already succeeded in raising a flag over the building. He met a young comrade in the burnt out parlament building and persuaded him to pose on the roof with the flag, Two other Red Army soldiers joined them to recreate the scene above..
Before the photo's first publication in Ogoniok, a Russian magazine, Khaldei realised that one of the three Soviet soldiers on the roof was wearing two watches, one on each wrist, a clear sign of looting which did not fit into the heroic image of the Red army. He scratched the second watch from the negative. Dark billowing clouds of smoke were added also to a later version of the photograph for more dramatic effect.
Another picture of the same scene
German magazine Der Spiegel wrote, "Khaldei saw himself as a propagandist for a just cause, the war against Hitler and the German invaders of his homeland," When asked about the manipulation, Khaldei responded, " It is a good photograph and historically significant. Next question please."
In the years before his death in October 1997, he liked to say: "I forgive the Germans, but I cannot forget."His father and three of his four sisters were murdered by the Germans.
As a war photographer from Red Square to the Bhudapst Ghetto, to Yalta and the Nuremberg trials Khaldei chronicled many of the world's most important events with an artist's eye and a journalist's timing. However after the war Khaldei became the victim of anti-Semitism in Stalin's totalitarian dictatorship and struggled to remain employed., but somehow he continued to photograph, now working as a freelance photographer for Soviet newspapers and focused on capturing the scenes of everyday life, In 1959, he got a job again at the newspaper Pravda where he worked until he was forced to retire in 1970. His wartime photographs were later collected in a 93 page book ( Ot Murmanska do Berlina / From Murmansk to Berlin) published in 1984.
