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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Vanessa Thorpe

A picture’s worth a thousand words … but only some of them tell the whole truth

Yevgeny Khaldei’s original image of the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag, Berlin, 1945, above, was later amended to obscure the officer wearing a watch on both wrists.
Yevgeny Khaldei’s original image of the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag, Berlin, 1945, above, was later amended to obscure the officer wearing a watch on both wrists. Photograph: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Shutterstock

A Russian soldier raises a Soviet flag over Berlin’s Reichstag in Yevgeny Khaldei’s well-known 1945 photograph of wartime triumph.

But in the original image, the officer standing below can clearly be seen wearing a watch on both wrists. Khaldei’s shot, first printed in a Moscow magazine, was quickly withdrawn and the extra watch, which might actually have been a military compass, was removed for safety’s sake. Looting was not a good look and was punishable by death.

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