Yevgeny Khaldei’s original image of the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag, Berlin, 1945.
The picture was later amended to obscure the officer wearing a watch on both wrists.
Photograph: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Shutterstock
From The Guardian May 2024: 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 Khaldei’s shot, first printed in a Moscow magazine, was quickly withdrawn and the extra watch, which might actually have been a military compass, was removed for safety’s sake.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.