Banner of Victory (Soviet Army in Berlin, 1945) (2024)

^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

image by Jens Pattke, 05 July 2001

Overview: Soviet flags over the Reichstag
Description of the flag
The famous Qaldeĭ photo

See also:

Soviet Union
Anti-Soviet Russian units in WWII (within the German forces)
Russian WWII commemorative flag
German Flags at the 1945 Soviet Victory Parade

Overview: Soviet flags over the Reichstag

On 7, April, 1945 Military Council of 3rd Shock Army (lead by generalKuznetsov) decided to make 9 “victory banners”. They were made oftable-clothes in Moscow and presented to 9 divisions of the Army in 20thsof April. All banners were destroyed except the banner #5. It was hoistedupon Reichstag on 30, April, 1945 21:50 by sergeants Egorov (russian) andMeliton Kantarija (georgian). Lt. Berest escorted the two inside thebuilding, but he didn’t went to the roof. As you understand nodody (andfamous photographer Khaldei too) can take a photograph in that time. Itwas late evening.
The banner was photographed by plane in early morning ot 1, May.But on afternoon 1 of May the banner was throwed down with germanprojectile. Somebody (may be Egorov and Kantarija again?) hoisted thebanner again in afternoon 1 of May. On 3 of May the Banner was takenoff from Reichstag and in June was sent to Moscow.
The Victory Banner was not a first red banner upon Reichstagin 1945. It is a well known fact since 1960ths. It was first officialflag, first flag officially adopted and inspired by army command.
Other banners was made by soldiers without official adoption. We knowabout 40 (!) red banners hoisted by different military units of Red Armyupon Reichstag. All they were hand-made, very often plain red withoutinscriptions. First red flag was hoisted by G. Bulatov on 30, April, 194514:25 (plain red banner). It was throwed down soon because the battle wasvery fierce.
Victor Lomantsov, 08 May 2000

The flag was produced in April 1945 in the trenches with the battle ofBerlin. On a red cloth of the bed-underwear, the initials of the regimentand the division were written with white color. There was no yellow color inthe confused of the war. At the May 5,1945 a soviet-georgian soldier washoisted the banner on the northern part of the Reichstag. The famousuniversally known photo became at the May,7 1945 duplicated. Here was theflag also the classic national flag of the USSR.
Jens Pattke, 28 June 2001

Description of the flag

Ratio 1:2. The hammer and sickle is really larger than usual. The inscriptionsand hammer and sickle are really white but a little fade (lost colour) — this isnot astonishing, they were drawn with paint (and not a good paint) about 55 yearsago).
Victor Lomantsov, 25 October 2000

The Victory Banner is red with big white hammer and sickle andstar and inscription:

Current location

This flag is now at the Central Museum of the Armed Forces, Moscow. Otherthing worth of mentioning is the shape of the star: it is more fatter (inscribedcircle diameter if the half of the outscribed diameter).
by Željko Heimer, 01 August 1996

In the German History Museum in Berlin, a copy of the Banner of Victoryis in the exhibition. The original is in Moscow.
Jens Pattke, 05 July 2001

Meaning

The Red Army’s WW II organization was a bitdifferent that that of Western armies, which can lead to some confusion.The basic large unit was the Army, of which there were three types:infantry, tank and shock. They tended to be smaller than Western armies— an infantry army usually controlled 4-8 rifle divisions, with 6 beingaverage. The Corps had been abolished as an echelon of command in 1941(primarily due to lack of trained commanders and staff), so that divisionswere controlled directly by the army headquarters. (The WWII Tank Corps,Mechanized Corps and Cavalry Corps were actually division-size units.)Thus the Army was intermediate in size between the Western corps and army.The next echelon of command was the Front, similar to the Western armygroup.
The Shock Army originated in 1942 and at first it was a temporarygrouping. An ordinary infantry Army would be reinforced with extraartillery and tank units to make the initial breakthrough in anattack, after which a Tank Army would exploit the breach. Thus"shock" = "assault". By 1944, the organizaton of the Shock Army hadbeen regularized and one was assigned to each active Front.If I recall correctly, the 3rd Shock Army remained on the postwarestablishment and was part of the Soviet Army Group of Forces in EastGermany until the end of the Cold War.
Tom Gregg, 12 May 2000

The famous Qaldeĭ photo

The photo shows a young soldier hoisting a red flagon top of the Reichstag and two officers looking at him,and behind, on the street some tanks and a car, and atram. On the photo the flag is plain red with the starand hammer and sickle, but without any text. The photographwas later used in the film Battle for Berlin, andis fairly well known and published in many places.
Željko Heimer, 31 July 1997

The absence of inscriptions on the photo explained by thefact that the flag had a plain reverse.
António Martins, 10 May 2000

Yevgeni Khaldei, the Ukranian photographer who has died aged 80,created one of the most celebrated images of the Second World War,that of a soldier raising the Soviet flag above the ruins of theReichstag on May 2, 1945.Khaldei’s lot, as a war journalist, was to produce propaganda, a taskeminently suited to his heroic style of photography. As the Soviettroops approached Berlin he was anxious to acquire a red flag thatmight act as a suitable backdrop.Since there were none at the front, he flew back to Moscow andpersuaded the storekeeper at his employers, the news agency Tass, tolend him three red tablecloths normally used for conferences. Khaldeithen sat up all night with his uncle, a tailor, sewing on stars,sickles and hammers.Early on the morning of May 2 he began to pick his way across thesmoking rubble that had been the centre of Berlin. He heard the newsof Hitler’s death, then climbed to the top of the Brandenburg gate,where he draped a flag around a statue.Spurred on by a desire to avenge the death of his Jewish sisters inthe war, Khaldei then turned his sights on the Reichstag. There wasstill fighting in the basem*nt when he rounded up a group of Sovietsoldiers who were celebrating their victory with vodka.The flag party carefully made its way up the broken staircase to theroof, loosing off bursts at each landing to keep German heads down.The roof itself was dangerously slick with blood. The flag was heldaloft by a Russian soldier, Alexei Kovalyov, aided by a sergeant fromDagestan.
David Cohen, 21 October 1997,quoting The Weekly Telegraph

A Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, carried aninterview with the Russian photographer Yevgeny Khaldeisome weeks ago. Khaldei is depicted holding a large copyof the Red flag on the Reichstag photo. Khladei is creditedwith taking the picture. Here are the main points concerningthe flag:Khaldei told the newspaper the flag was made by his uncle,who stitched the hammer, sickle and star on to a red tablecloth taken from the TASS office in Moscow. Khaldei wasthen on a short stay in Moscow, but soon returned to thefront. On 2 May 1945 Khaldei ordered the three soldiers inhis company up to the roof of the Reichstag. Variousarrangements were tried before the final famous picture wasmade. The day after the picture arrived in Moscow. However,a month later Khaldei was ordered to fix the picture becausethe soldier supporting the one holding the flag had twowatches on his arm!
Jan Oskar Engene, 01 August 1996

Apparently there is more to the story. Like theIwo Jima one, the famous scenewas not the original but a staged reenactment. (OK, Iwo Jimawasn’t a fake, just a second flag raising.) Apparently thesoldier with the flag was wearing several wristwatches, and Sovietauthorities ruled that it wouldn’t do to show the Red Army lootingEurope, so they had Khaldei go back and shoot the scene again.(You’d think they could have just touched up the photo, so this mightbe an urban legend.) Great photo all the same.
T. F. Mills, 20 October 1997

An obituary with more details and two photographs(one was the Reichstag picture) was published in theThe ElectronicTelegraph for 11 October 1997 (“Yevgeny Khaldei— Ukrainian war photographer who captured the momentof Soviet triumph on the ruins of the Reichstag”). Thereit is told that «Khaldei always denied allegations thatthe moment had been restaged for his Leica», but that«The truth, however, certainly succumbed under the handsof the Kremlin’s picture editors. Aware of the potentialpower of the photograph, they made sure to touch out oneof the two watches being worn by each soldier, to preventaccusations of looting. In deference to Stalin, it wasalso given out that the flag-raiser was a fellow Georgian,Mikhail Kantaria, and that he had been helped by aRussian.»
Jan Oskar Engene, 21 October 1997

Stepan Andreyevich Neustroyev was the commanderof the battalion that stormed the Reichstag in1945 and the man who hoisted the flag over thebuilding… one of the most famous images of WorldWar Two and only last year did it become knownthat it had been doctored… Khaldei had made theflag in the photograph himself from red tableclothsfrom Tass, which were emblazoned with thehammer and sickle like the Soviet flag.In Erich Kuby’s book entitled The Russians AndBerlin, on page 60 he says:

It seems strange thatthe Russians should have looked upon the Reichstag,deserted since the [Nazi started] fire ofFebruary 1933, and now an empty piece of masonry,its windows and doors bricked up, as thesymbol of Germany……Mednikov describes this historic action in greatdetail.
About noon on April 28, one of ourbattalions advanced on the Spree. At the same timethe commander of the regiment, Col. F.M.Zinchenko, took charge of a red banner…expresslyset aside for planting on the dome. It was RedBanner No.5 of the [150th Rifle Division] 3rd ShockArmy…[it was] twenty-three-year-old Capt.Stefan Andreyevich Noystroev…men [who eventually]battled their way into the building, fighting forevery room and corridor…Noystroev ordered a shockdetachment commanded by Lt. Berest toescort the two [Zinchenko appointed regimental]standard-bearers…[who] took nearly half a day toreach the dome. At 10:50 P.M. on April 30, the bannerof victory was unfurled over the Reichstag.
From this account it becomes clear that the famousphotograph [by Khaldei] of [standard-bearers]Egorov and Kantariya planting the Red Flag on theroof of the Reichstag could not have been takenat that historic moment. For a start, it was darkat 10:50 p.m., while the picture was obviously takenin broad daylight. Moreover, the soldiers in thestreet appear to be moving about quite fearleeslyand openly, which they would not have done hadfighting still been going on all around them-asit was at the time the banner was first held aloft.If we look more closely, we see that there is notrace of anything on the vulgar pinnacle of theReichstag to which a flag pole could have beenattached. The soldier is simply holding up theflag in a dramatic pose. In other words, theworld-famous photograph must have been taken a dayor two after the storming of the Reichstag.

Ben Weed, 28 February 1998