Banner over the Reichstag: The photo for which Viktor Temin was almost shot

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

One of the most famous photographs of the Great Patriotic War was taken on May 1, 1945 - it captures the banner of Victory waving over the Reichstag. The military photojournalist of the Pravda newspaper Viktor Temin took this picture at his own peril and risk and promptly delivered it to the editorial office, after which the photo was distributed throughout the world.

Viktor Temin is considered one of the most efficient and professional photographers in the USSR. He filmed significant events in Soviet history: the first expedition to the North Pole, the rescue of the Chelyuskin people and the polar drift of the Papanin people, Valery Chkalov's flights. The reporter took part in the battles on Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin-Gol River, as well as in the Soviet-Finnish war.

During the war, Temin filmed for the Pravda newspaper and for Krasnaya Zvezda. During the Berlin operation, the reporter first got a place in the tank in order to get into the city one of the first and capture the battle for Berlin, and then it became a matter of honor for him to photograph the red banner over the Reichstag. On April 29-30 there were battles for the parliament building, and one could only wait. The assault flag of the 150th Infantry Division appeared over the Reichstag in the early morning of May 1, and the photographer managed to take a picture at noon of the same day.

There are two versions of how this happened: according to the first, the Po-2 plane to Temin was provided by the command for shooting of national importance, and the air corridor was provided by Marshal Zhukov himself. According to the second version, the photographer simply rushed to the field airfield near Berlin and persuaded pilot Ivan Vetshak to take him into the air. Temin had a special pass, signed by Stalin, which allowed him to be present on all fronts.

On May 1, a battle was still going on around the Reichstag, the building was surrounded by smoke, and it was dangerous to circle over it. “Due to the very difficult situation, we, unfortunately, only managed to fly only once near the Reichstag, where the red flag was fluttering,” the pilot later recalled. Temin with his "Leica" managed to take only a few frames, while the voice in the radio ordered him to return immediately and threatened with a tribunal.

Having taken the picture, the photojournalist decided to fly to Moscow in order to print the photo as soon as possible and return to Berlin with the newspaper ready. The plane was supposed to fly to Poland, where it would have to transfer to a night bomber to Moscow. In order not to waste time on landing and a new takeoff, Temin on the radio asked for permission for a direct flight and a pass through the border, but the order came too late.

To fly over the border of the Soviet Union, it was necessary to tell the anti-aircraft gunners a password with missiles, which was changed daily, but the pilot did not know it. When the plane landed in Moscow six hours later, 62 bullet holes were counted on it

When the film was developed in Moscow, it turned out that the flags were not visible in the photographs, although there were at least a dozen of them in various places of the building. The newspaper took the photographer at his word, especially since the whole world had already announced the hoisting of the flag over the Reichstag. As a result, the editor-in-chief ordered the retoucher to finish painting the flag in the most suitable place. Well, the artist had a poor idea of how big the dome of the Reichstag was, so the banner turned out to be disproportionately huge, two to three times larger than the real one. And yet in the morning on the front page of Pravda there was a photograph of the banner, and Stalin's order on the capture of Berlin was also printed here.

On May 3, Temin loaded several thousand newspaper issues onto the plane and again went to Berlin, and within a few hours the Soviet soldiers had copies of Pravda. And then there was the most interesting thing - a conversation between the initiative photographer and the Marshal of the Soviet Union.

“I thought that my flight was already forgotten, but it turned out not. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper told me that Zhukov ordered me to be shot for such self-righteousness. Knowing the cool temper of Georgy Konstantinovich, I was pretty cowardly. We met with him back in Khalkhin Gol, so I risked talking to him before I was arrested. Zhukov accepted me. And without a word I put the Pravda newspaper with my picture in front of him. When Zhukov saw the photograph, his face brightened. “For such work you deserve the title of Hero of the Soviet Union,” he said. "But for hijacking a plane … you will receive the Order of the Red Star."

Temin received three Orders of the Red Star and lived a long life - 78 years. After the victory, he was present at the Nuremberg trials, at the signing of the act of surrender of Japan, and in peacetime for 35 years he regularly took pictures of the writer Mikhail Sholokhov.

The history of the photograph "Banner of Victory" was recalled by the journalist of "Mariyskaya Pravda" Yuri Golovin, to whom Temin presented one of the prints with a dedication

“He considered this photograph to be the main one in his life. He always printed it in a large format and often presented it as a business card. It gave, and did not give away. Temin honored me with such a gift for his help in the design of his first photo exhibition in Yoshkar-Ola, which opened in the summer of 1968 in the Republican Museum of Local Lore."