The Victory Banner hoisted on the Reichstag building - 80 years ago

Exactly eighty years ago, on the night of 1 May 1945, a defining moment in the history of the Second World War took place: Soviet military intelligence personnel Alexei Berest, Mikhail Yegorov, and Meliton Kantaria raised the Victory Banner atop the Reichstag building.

The idea to prepare red flags was proposed on 9 April 1945 at a meeting of heads of the political departments of all armies of the 1st Belorussian Front. As a result, nine red banners were sewn by hand, modelled on the national flag of the USSR.

Fierce fighting raged across Berlin, with every building contested. The capture of the Reichstag — one of the Nazi Germany’s main symbols — held special significance. The building was heavily defended: all approaches were swept by fire from all types of weaponry. But the resistance was overcome, and at around 3 a.m. on 1 May, Red Army soldiers Mikhail Yegorov and Meliton Kantaria, under the command of Alexei Berest, hoisted the Victory Banner on the roof of the Reichstag. For this act of heroism, Yegorov and Kantaria were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 8 May 1946.  

It was the fourth banner, while the first three had been destroyed during the night by German long-range artillery fire targeting the Reichstag’s roof. Among the first to raise a banner were Red Army soldiers Rakhimzhan Koshkarbayev and Grigory Bulatov.

Bullet-ridden and blood-soaked, the Victory Banner became a sacred relic of our nation.

No one is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten.