Soviet soldiers after the battle of Berlin

• The Red Flag on the Reichstag

  

  KHALDEÏ Evgueni (1917 - 1997)

• Group of Soviet soldiers in front of the Brandenburg Gate

  

  ANONYMOUS

• Russian soldiers immortalized on the walls of the Reichstag

  

  KHALDEÏ Evgueni (1917 - 1997)

The Red Flag on the Reichstag

© Central Museum of the Armed Forces of Moscow / The Caen Memorial

To close

Title: Group of Soviet soldiers in front of the Brandenburg Gate

Author : ANONYMOUS (-)

Creation date : May 1945

Date shown: May 1945

Technique and other indications: photography

Storage location: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin) website

Contact copyright: © BPK, Berlin, dist. RMN - Grand Palais / BPK image

Picture reference: 08-528142

Group of Soviet soldiers in front of the Brandenburg Gate

© BPK, Berlin, dist. RMN - Grand Palais / BPK image

To close

Title: Russian soldiers immortalized on the walls of the Reichstag

Author : KHALDEÏ Evgueni (1917 - 1997)

Creation date : May 1945

Date shown: May 1945

Technique and other indications: photography

Storage location: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin) website

Contact copyright: © BPK, Berlin, dist. RMN - Grand Palais / Voller Ernst / BPK © All rights reserved

Picture reference: 10-535921 / 1178

Russian soldiers immortalized on the walls of the Reichstag

© BPK, Berlin, dist. RMN - Grand Palais / Voller Ernst / BPK All rights reserved

Publication date: November 2015

Historical context

Berlin in Soviet hands

The advance of the Soviets accelerated from the beginning of 1945 thanks to the launch of a massive offensive which enabled them to occupy most of Poland and East Prussia. The forces of the Reich being considerably weakened, it is the last reserves of the Wehrmacht which are launched in the battle, as well as teenagers massively decimated.

The fighting begins on April 16. With the surrender of Berlin, signed on May 2 at 4 am, two days after Hitler's suicide in his bunker, the city was destroyed more than 30%, and more than 70% in the center.

These photos were taken a few days after the end of the fighting, in two emblematic places of power immortalized by countless photographers: the Brandenburg Gate, erected in 1791 for the Prussian king Frederick William II who, alone, could pass through the central passage, and the Reichstag, built in 1894 for the Reich Assembly. Its fire on February 27, 1933, was attributed by the Nazis to a plot by the Communists which served to justify a violent campaign of repression of which the latter were the first targets.

It is therefore logically on the Reichstag, the final point targeted by Stalin, that the Soviet soldiers plant a flag on 1^er May 1945. Many photographs have been taken of this symbolic moment, all of them from reconstructions, because no photographer has been able to immortalize the scene in the early morning of the 1^er may. The first picture, taken by the photographer Evgueni Khaldeï, became famous in the 1960s. Many times reproduced, we erased the second watch worn on the wrist of the officer who supports the soldier hoisting the flag, too obvious sign of the multiples thefts committed by the victors.

Image Analysis

The victory of ordinary soldiers

Unlike these types of images, political symbols of victory, the next two photos show neither famous officers nor flags.

The second photo, due to an anonymous, shows six soldiers in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The photographer took care to show the entire monument, badly damaged during the fighting; not much remains of the quadriga above it, after German soldiers ambushed inside were dislodged by Soviet artillery fire. We can see, behind the soldiers, an artillery piece next to three trucks parked in front of the monument. Far from being in parade dress - one of the uniforms is stained with dust - the characters still seem on their guard, looking at an enigmatic point off-screen in the direction of which one of them points his weapon: the city is not not yet secure. The medal worn by one of the soldiers was certainly awarded earlier, because the one awarded "for the capture of Berlin" was not instituted until June 1945.

The third photograph is due, like the first, to Evgueni Khaldeï. Here, the photographer has taken a close-up of a detail of the Reichstag, covered down to the smallest carved ornaments in Russian-language graffiti. We can clearly distinguish names, dates and places: a certain Vladimir Sergeyevich Vassiliev, born in 1925, left traces of his passage; V. Z. Cheptoun chose to mention the name of his village, Tchernobaevka, not far from Kherson, occupied for two and a half years by the Germans. Others have etched the memory of military operations and the journey to Berlin: Stalingrad, Odessa, Kiev. Among these names, overwhelmingly male, stands out that of a woman, Eremeeva Oksana. It is in condensed geography and military but also social history of the conflict that we discover through these graffiti. This photo, as the inscriptions show, was taken a fortnight after the building was taken.

Interpretation

Revelation and occultation

These two clichés reveal a vision of war that is very different from that which quickly established itself in the Soviet media and dominated until the 1960s, when the rank and file disappeared behind the great strategists, the first of them being Stalin. With the latter will be obscured the reality of human losses, estimated today at 27 million civilian and military casualties, the violence of the fighting and the harshness of the first steps of a complex post-war period.

The graffiti left by these very young soldiers in the rubble of the Reichstag, some of which have been preserved and are now on display, also mark the Soviets' hold on the city ... and constitute its most civilized aspect. Because, what will be so long hidden behind the accounts of the battle, it is the excesses, plunder and rape practiced massively. We will have to wait for the fall of the wall for these subjects to be mentioned.

• Berlin
• Germany
• War of 39-45
• soviet army
• city
• Stalin (Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, said)

Bibliography

ANONYMOUS, A Woman in Berlin: Diary (April 22 - June 22, 1945), Paris, Gallimard, coll. "Witnesses", 2006.BARBAT Victor, "Banners and Flags, on Some Ways of Raising and Representing Them: The Example of the Reichstag, May 1945", 1895: review of the history of cinema, no 74, 2014, p. 70-95.BEEVOR Anthony, The Fall of Berlin, Paris, Editions de Fallois, 2002. KERSHAW Ian, The End: Germany (1944-1945), Paris, Le Seuil, coll. "The Historical Universe", 2012.LOPEZ Jean, Berlin: the giant offensives of the Red Army. Vistula, Oder, Elbe (January 12 - May 9, 1945), Paris, Economica, coll. “Campaigns and Strategies” (no 80), 2010.

To cite this article

Valérie POZNER, "Soviet soldiers after the battle of Berlin"