Even if what you say is true, so what! So the photographer wasn't there to take the picture! Big deal! The Soviet Union whipped Hitler, and everyone knows it except ideological zealots who have some ax to grind. The famous photo of raising the US flag on Iwo Jima was staged! But my uncle died on that stinking island, and I don't give a flying hoot if the propaganda photo was staged or not -- I KNOW the people who fought in that war personally, they were my father, my uncles, and they were all great, decent, hard working and honorable people, and they told me what happened except for the horrific parts, mostly (although my dad did tell me that the US Army buried food in the sand on the beaches in the Phillipines that was intended for the people -- and the GIs dug it up and gave it out to people too). And they also told me that the Soviets and we were "best friends" and they called Stalin "Uncle Joe".

According to Wikipedia, the celebrated image is a re-enactment of an earlier flag-raising not photographed (the first men in the Reichstag were not in the photograph). The original flag raising was at 10.40 PM on 30 April 1945 when twenty-three-year old soldier Mikhail Minin climbed the statue to install a flag pole to the Germania's, crown. As that occurred at night, the next day, Nazi soldiers took it down; they were defeated two days later. Finally, on 2 May 1945 photographer Khaldei scaled the Reichstag to take the photograph of two soldiers: Georgian Meliton Kantaria and the Russian Mikhail Yegorov. Later, the photograph was altered to hide evidence of looting (two watches, one on each wrist); later versions contained additional smoke in the sky, and a more visually impressive flag. As with so much of the record of the War, the account is modified to fit the requirements of Russian heroics.