http://soviethammer.info
stalins-princess
Soviet flag flying over the Reichstag
The iconic photo turns out to be staged by the Tass photographer Yevgeny Khaldei in May 1945, three days after Berlin fell to the Soviet Army.
A group of Soviet soldiers had briefly raised a Hammer and Sickle over the Riechstag on April 30 but it had been brought down by German snipers before any record had been made. An alternate view, is that they took the Reichstag late at night, so was too dark to record the flying of the flag.
Mr Khaldei recruited a teenage private, Aleksei Kovalyev to hold the flag with his comrade Aleksei Goryachev and Mr Ismailov.
Mr Khaldei later disclosed that he had sewn the flag together from three tablecloths in Moscow after being ordered to fly to Berlin to capture the Nazi defeat.
