Raising a flag over the Reichstag, by Yevgeny Khaldei
The original photo (left) was altered (right) by editing the watch on the soldier's right wrist.
I'm reading Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which is utterly depressing and endlessly fascinating. Here's an interesting tidbit regarding looting by the Red Army (particularly of wristwatches) and that iconic image of the Soviet soldier raising the Hammer and Sickle above Berlin's Reichstag:
Wristwatches seemed to have almost mythical significance for Russian soldiers, who would walk around wearing half a dozen if they could. An iconic photograph of a Russian soldier raising the Soviet flag atop the Berlin Reichstag had to be touched up to remove the wristwatches from the arms of the young hero. In Budapest, the obsession with them remained part of local folklore and may have helped shape local perceptions of the Red Army. A few months after the war, a Budapest cinema showed a newsreel about the Yalta Conference. When President Roosevelet raised his arm while speaking to Stalin, several members of the audience shouted: "Mind your watch!" The same was true in Poland, where for many years Polish children would "play" Soviet soldiers by shouting: "Davai chasyi"--"Give me your watch." A beloved Polish children's television series of the late 1960s included a scene of Russian and Polish soldiers during wartime, camping out in deserted German buildings having amassed a vast collection of stolen clocks.
