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Banner of Victory (Soviet Army in Berlin, 1945)

by Jens Pattke, 05 Jul 2001

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

See also:

Overview: Soviet flags over the Reichstag

On 7, April, 1945 Military Council of 3rd Shock Army (lead by general Kuznetsov) decided to make 9 “victory banners”. They were made of table-clothes in Moscow and presented to 9 divisions of the Army in 20ths of April. All banners were destroyed except the banner #5. It was hoisted upon Reichstag on 30, April, 1945 21:50 by sergeants Egorov (russian) and Meliton Kantarija (georgian). Lt. Berest escorted the two inside the building, but he didn't went to the roof. As you understand nodody (and famous photographer Khaldei too) can take a photograph in that time. It was 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 german projectile. Somebody (may be Egorov and Kantarija again?) hoisted the banner again in afternoon 1 of May. On 3 of May the Banner was taken off from Reichstag and in June was sent to Moscow.

The Victory Banner was not a first red banner upon Reichstag in 1945. It is a well known fact since 1960ths. It was first official flag, first flag officially adopted and inspired by army command.

Other banners was made by soldiers without official adoption. We know about 40 (!) red banners hoisted by different military units of Red Army upon Reichstag. All they were hand-made, very often plain red without inscriptions. First red flag was hoisted by G. Bulatov on 30, April, 1945 14:25 (plain red banner). It was throwed down soon because the battle was very fierce.

Victor Lomantsov, 08 May 2000

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

Description of the flag

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

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

150 стр. ордена
150th rifle [division, awarded with the] Order [of]
Кутузова II ст.
Kutuzov of II degree,
идрицк. див.
[honour title] Idrickaâ division,
79 С.К. 3У.А.IБ.Ф
79th joint corps, 3rd Shock Army, 1st Byelorussian Front

all in cyrillic letters, of course — It is the full name of military unit. Inscription is on one side of the flag, reverse side is without inscriptions.
Victor Lomantsov, 08 May 2000

All letters are letters with big character [upper case and small caps],
letters have different heights,
no regular and normal fonts,
hammer and sickle are the half of the height of the flag cloth.

Jens Pattke, 05 Jul 2001

Flagmaster shows this flag with a couple of mistakes in the inscription.
António Martins, 10 May 2000

Current location

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

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

Meaning

The Red Armyʼs WW II organization was a bit different 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 being average. The Corps had been abolished as an echelon of command in 1941 (primarily due to lack of trained commanders and staff), so that divisions were 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 army group.

The Shock Army originated in 1942 and at first it was a temporary grouping. An ordinary infantry Army would be reinforced with extra artillery and tank units to make the initial breakthrough in an attack, after which a Tank Army would exploit the breach. Thus "shock" = "assault". By 1944, the organizaton of the Shock Army had been regularized and one was assigned to each active Front. If I recall correctly, the 3rd Shock Army remained on the postwar establishment and was part of the Soviet Army Group of Forces in East Germany until the end of the Cold War.

Tom Gregg, 12 May 2000

The famous Qaldei~ photo

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

The absence of inscriptions on the photo explained by the fact 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 the Reichstag on May 2, 1945. Khaldeiʼs lot, as a war journalist, was to produce propaganda, a task eminently suited to his heroic style of photography. As the Soviet troops approached Berlin he was anxious to acquire a