100 PHOTOGRAPHS 21
“This is what I was waiting for for 1,400 days,” the
Ukrainian-born Yevgeny Khaldei said as he gazed at the
ruins of Berlin on May 2, 1945. After four years of fighting
and photographing across Eastern Europe, the Red Army
soldier arrived in the heart of the Nazis’ homeland armed
with his Leica III rangefinder and a massive Soviet flag
that his uncle, a tailor, had fashioned for him from three
red tablecloths. Adolf Hitler had committed suicide two
days before, yet the war still raged as Khaldei made his
way to the Reichstag. There he told three soldiers to join
him, and they clambered up broken stairs onto the parlia-
ment building’s blood-soaked parapet. Gazing through his
camera, Khaldei knew he had the shot he had hoped for:
“I was euphoric.” In printing, Khaldei dramatized the im-
age by intensifying the smoke and darkening the sky—even
scratching out part of the negative—to craft a romanticized
scene that was part reality, part artifice and all patriotism.
Published in the Russian magazine Ogonek, the image be-
came an instant propaganda icon. And no wonder. The flag
jutting from the heart of the enemy exalted the nobility of
communism, proclaimed the Soviets the new overlords and
hinted that by lowering the curtain of war, Premier Joseph
Stalin would soon hoist a cold new iron one across the land.RAISING A FLAG OVER THE REICHSTAG Yevgeny Khaldei, 1945