Who Really Raised The Soviet Flag On The Reichstag?

“The most dangerous moment comes with victory.”
Napoleon Bonaparte

On a bloodstained rooftop in Berlin in May 1945, a young Soviet photographer clicked the shutter of his Leica camera. Through his viewfinder, the outline of a Red Army soldier raising the Soviet flag amidst the ruins of the conquered Nazi capital was visible.

That location of this photograph had stood empty for twelve years—since the suspicious fire here in 1933 that had propelled the Nazi Party into power—was of little consequence to this group of assembled men. For these soldiers, and the more than two million others now converging upon the city, the significance lay not in its recent past, but largely in its name.

A name that carried the weight of history, power, and a distinctly Germanic, guttural resonance: the Reichstag.

Officially designated Red Army Target No. 105, the Reichstag would serve as a rallying cry for Soviet troops across Europe and Asia, the act of taking the building representing the moment of complete submission of the German – and Nazi – war machine.

This immortalised moment would eventually become among the most iconic photographs of the Second World War—celebrated for its symbolism yet shrouded in controversy.

Ukrainian photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, had assembled three soldiers on the roof of the Reichstag in the early hours of May 2nd, as the surrender of the city had not yet been announced. On closer inspection of the photograph, the silhouette of the Brandenburg Gate is barely visible in the background through a veil of smoke with the Soviet hammer & sickle flag recognisable in the foreground, held by a soldier who is precariously perched on the edge of the parliament building. Beneath him can be seen the two other soldiers.

The flag, caught in the wind, is clearly pointing eastwards. Towards Moscow.