1945 Moscow Victory Parade Story

A great Victory Parade was held in Moscow on June 24th 1945. This parade was one of the 20th Century's finest renditions of the classical Roman Triumph of ancient times. This event marked the Soviet ceremonial apotheosis of their "Great Patriotic War", ending in the victory over German fascism. Endless streams of tanks, guns and katyusha rocket trucks rumbled across the cobblestones of Red Square, marshals and generals and regiment after regiment of men paraded past Stalin on the podium above Lenin's tomb and past the Deputy Supreme Commander, Marshal Zhukov, seated astride a white charger. One Soviet General described the moving finale when the captured German war banners, taken from the Berlin Army museum which included WW1 Imperial flags, as each one of the flags being the emblem of a defeated German fighting unit, that were to be ritually consigned to infamy [of another army museum]: "the huge orchestra suddenly stopped playing. Red Square was immersed in silence. Then a menacing staccato beat of hundreds of drums could be heard. Marching in precise formation, [the 1933 reconstitution of the German Army metal dedication plates on the Nazi flag streamers licking the stones of Red Square while] beating out an iron cadence as a column of Soviet soldiers drew nigh: 200 soldiers carrying 200 German banners. Upon reaching the tomb, the soldiers did a right turn and flung the captured enemy banners and standards [many] with the black swastikas at the steps of the Mausoleum. There was a downpour of rain. It was impossible to tear one's eyes from these dirty banners that had been cast down onto the wet granite [at the feet of the triumphant conquers]."

Fifty years after the fall of the Third German Reich the USSR itself also was no more! But even the dissolution of Soviet State could not quell the memory of the impact of such a traumatic event as the "Great Patriotic War". Through out the entire former Soviet Union, as shown on the Moscow Evening News, solemn ceremonies were carried out to mark once again this victory of Slavic arms over Teutonic fascism. Modern political realities however this time demanded that two separate parades be held in Moscow; one for the War Veterans Generation yet again in front of Lenin's Tomb, and another across town as a show to the world via a display of armed might that the current Russian military still had capability and fidelity to their current leader, President Yeltsin. Missing from both parades, due to international guest attendance such as Germany's Prime Minister Koll, was a recreation of the 1945 parades profound use of captured German war banners! This part of the parade was no longer possible, as some of these flags had been burned fifty years earlier, and still others secretly sold from the basement stores of the Moscow Red Army Museum. Never the less the combined roar of the troops, both young and old, was still as impressive as ever. Leading the parade was the Soviet flag that had stormed the Reichstag in 1945 and the man who hoisted the flag over the building...one of the most famous images of World War Two and only recently did it become known that it had been doctored...Khaldei had made the flag in the photograph himself from red tablecloths from Tass in Moscow, which were emblazoned with the hammer and sickle like the Soviet national flag.

Moscow Victory Parade page ...RETURN