The Fall of Berlin

On This Day in History: May 2

Berlin fell on May 2, 1945, and Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky was there, but almost not. Hence, the big-ass fuck-you Hitler smile. He was born in 1915 in Moscow to a Jewish family. His father, Aron, was a lawyer and that meant he was smart, which meant Stalin didn’t like him and he had to die. Aron Dolmatovsky was shot in 1938 on false charges of being against the glorious revolution or some “enemy of the people” bullshit while Yevgeniy was away in East Russia working on his writing career. Yevgeniy wouldn’t find out what happened to his father until the 1950s, after Stalin kicked the autocratic bucket.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: May 2, 1945--

As war with the Nazi assbadgers approached, Yevgeniy was made a military correspondent because his poems had become famous and were made into songs used for propaganda purposes. Two months into the war with Germany, he was wounded and captured. Being a Soviet captured by Nazis is bad. Being a Jew captured by Nazis is lethal.

But Yevgeniy escaped! Sheltered by a Ukrainian family who risked their lives to do so, Dolmatovsky recuperated then headed back to the front lines and was captured again godfuckingdammit!

This time it was Italians who took him prisoner, but they didn’t have their shit together and Yevgeniy escaped again and wrote a poem about it, and the Soviets set that poem to music and used it as fuck-the-Axis propaganda because of course they did. Being captured twice raised the suspicions of the Soviet secret police so Yevgeniy got to spend some quality time with the NKVD (a forerunner of the KGB). But he was a good storyteller so they said yeah you’re fine back to the front with you also here have a promotion.

He continued to write poems during the war based on his experiences, many of which were set to music. World War II wasn’t fun for anyone, but especially not for the Soviets, who did the majority of the dying in the European theatre. It explains just how happy Dolmatovsky must have been carrying that Hitler statue head to celebrate it being almost over. The photo was taken by another famous, and also Jewish, Yevgeniy—this one with the last name Khaldei, who became known for his wartime photography. Khaldei’s most famous photo was inspired by Americans raising their flag over Iwo Jima; it’s called Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag and was taken the same day as his photo of Dolmatovsky.

Weighed down with medals, Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky returned to live in Moscow after the war and continued to write poetry. He died in 1994.

NOTE: This piece was researched and written by a human, not some bullshit “ai” plagiarism software.

ANOTHER NOTE: This photo is on the cover of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down: Number 2 (see the cover below), which you should totally buy if you haven’t already.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.