The Vinkt massacre

In the last days of May 1940, as the Belgian Army fought its last battle on the river Leie, soldiers of the German 225th Infantry Division committed, in two Flemish villages west of Ghent, Vinkt and Meigem, one of the worst crimes against civilians of the eighteen-day Belgian campaign. After three days of hard fighting against the Chasseurs Ardennais, in which they had suffered heavy losses, the Germans decided that civilians had been shooting at them. They drove inhabitants and refugees ahead of them as a human shield, shut them up in a church and, on the evening of 27 May, shot them in groups against walls in the centre of Vinkt. The executions continued on 28 May, after Belgium had already capitulated. According to the most commonly accepted figures 86 civilians were murdered, and including the victims of the explosion in the church at Meigem and of shellfire in those days, about 140 people died in the two villages.

Date and figures

The massacre at Vinkt, in which German troops murdered 86 Belgian civilians, is usually dated 25–28 May. The time frame is correct: the Germans took the first civilians hostage on 25 May, and the last executions took place on 28 May. The most tragic day was Monday 27 May, when most of the victims died. The figure of 86 corresponds to the findings of the Belgian war crimes commission and is given in most studies as the number of civilians killed deliberately, in executions and summary killings. The memorial at Vinkt commemorates 87 victims, among them a child who was never identified. Higher figures, up to about 140 dead, also include the victims of the explosion in the church at Meigem and people killed by shells when the Germans drove them ahead into the line of fire. Some of the refugees killed may have been taken away by their families and died elsewhere, so the exact number can no longer be established.

The battle on the Leie

After the German offensive of 10 May the Belgian Army, together with the French and British, fell back from line to line. At Hannut and Gembloux the Allies held up Colonel General Walter von Reichenau’s 6th Army for several days, but the breakthrough on the Meuse at Sedan cut off from France all the forces fighting in Belgium. The Belgians gave up Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent, and on 23–24 May took up their last line of defence: along the Leie from Menen through Kortrijk to Deinze, and beyond along the Schipdonk Canal, which runs from Deinze towards the sea. Behind them, on a remnant of the country, hundreds of thousands of refugees were crowded together. Many Belgians remembered the German atrocities of August 1914, known as the “Rape of Belgium”, and fled before the troops arrived.

On the morning of 25 May the Germans forced the Schipdonk Canal between Vosselare and Meigem, at the same place where they had crossed it in 1914. The exhausted regiments of the Belgian 4th Infantry Division largely surrendered, and Meigem fell into German hands. The road west, however, was barred by the 1st Chasseurs Ardennais Division, an elite formation made up mostly of Walloons from the Ardennes. They dug in at Vinkt, in the convent, in the farmsteads and in the fields along the road to Nevele, and for three days beat off attacks. During the night of 25–26 May the 1st Chasseurs Regiment, worn out by the fighting, was relieved by the 3rd Regiment from reserve, while on the German side the bled-out 56th Infantry Division was replaced by Lieutenant General Ernst Schaumburg’s 225th Division.

This was a third-wave division, formed in August 1939 in Military District X, mainly around Hamburg, and made up largely of older reservists. In May it had already fought in the Netherlands, but it had no experience of hard infantry fighting. At Vinkt its regiments, above all the 377th Infantry Regiment, ran into a defence that fired on them from the flank and rear, from concealed positions in buildings and standing corn, supported by accurate Belgian artillery. According to local Belgian studies, the capture of Vinkt cost the Germans about 170 killed, including 11 officers, and many times that number wounded. The Chasseurs Ardennais lost 39 killed at Vinkt.

25 and 26 May: hostages

From the very first day the Germans began using civilians as a human shield. Near Deinze they drove a group of inhabitants and refugees ahead of them towards the Belgian positions. According to Belgian studies, when the group came under artillery fire several dozen people were killed. The figure most often given is 38 dead, although not all sources agree on the place and circumstances. The Germans likewise drove captured Belgian soldiers ahead of them, an open violation of the laws of war.

On Sunday 26 May a rumour spread among the German soldiers that they had been fired on from houses. At Kruiswege, on the boundary between Meigem and Vinkt, a firing squad had already lined up a group of men against the wall of a barn. A German officer stopped the execution at the last moment. The Germans herded the inhabitants of the combat area into the church at Meigem. According to witnesses the order was given by Franz Lohmann, an officer of the 225th Division, described in the accounts sometimes as a lieutenant and sometimes as a captain. From then on the cry “Zivilisten haben geschossen” (“civilians fired”) accompanied every new reprisal.

27 May: the executions

On Monday 27 May, after a heavy artillery preparation and air raids, the Germans renewed their attack. The Belgian artillery, convinced that the chasseurs had already left Vinkt, shelled its own positions by mistake. At about half past two in the afternoon the Chasseurs Ardennais withdrew towards Tielt, and at roughly 3 p.m. units of the 377th Infantry Regiment entered the village.

On the same day, at about 4 p.m., an explosion occurred in the overcrowded church at Meigem, where, according to witnesses, more than three hundred people were then sheltering. Twenty-seven people were killed and about 40 wounded, many of whom later died in hospitals in Ghent. The cause of the explosion remains disputed to this day. The Germans claimed at once that a stray Belgian shell had hit the church, and this version was later confirmed by a Belgian Army inquiry. Many survivors, however, testified that they had seen German soldiers throwing grenades from the choir loft. Local historians regard the question as unresolved. The Germans drove the survivors from Meigem across a pontoon bridge over the canal and locked them up for the night in the church at Sint-Martens-Leerne. On the way the men were beaten and subjected to a mock execution.

Outside the centre of Vinkt, most of the victims died along the road to Nevele, on the axis of the German attack, where the Germans had suffered their heaviest losses. At the Van der Vennet family’s farm soldiers shot three men; at the Steenkiste farm they shot five, among them a father and son of the Vermeulen family. In the hamlet of De Spoele five men from Meigem were clubbed to death with rifle butts. At the “Zwart Huizeke” inn on the edge of Meigem twelve inhabitants and refugees were murdered, most of them bayoneted, and buried in a mass grave that was found only several days later.

In the evening a round-up began in Vinkt itself. The Germans dragged people out of cellars and shelters, and drove everyone out into the street from the convent, where about 180 refugees and elderly villagers had taken refuge. The women and children were assembled in a meadow outside the village, while the men were first marched off towards Meigem and then ordered to run back to the centre in fives. There they were shot in three places: against the wall of the presbytery, against the wall of the De Laere slaughterhouse, and by the convent, where a group of old men was killed. According to a local Belgian study, 42 people died in this way. The youngest victim was 13, the oldest 91. Among those killed were the local curate, Verstraeten, who had tried to intercede for his parishioners, and twin brothers, monks from Oostakker, who had fled the war to Vinkt. Four of those shot survived beneath the bodies of others. After the war their testimony proved crucial. German soldiers photographed the bodies lying in the street. These photographs, too, were later used as evidence.

28 May: after the capitulation

At 4 a.m. on 28 May the capitulation of the Belgian Army, accepted by King Leopold III, came into force. At Vinkt it did not mean the end. The Germans assembled several hundred inhabitants and refugees in a meadow on the Poekestraat, where a white flag was already flying. In front of the crowd, further men accused of shooting or of espionage were forced to dig their own graves and were shot. Among them were a father and two sons of the Pieters family from neighbouring Zeveren. The youngest was shot when he threw down his spade. According to various studies, nine or ten more people were killed that day. The Germans locked more than a hundred men from Vinkt in a cramped chicken hatchery by the cemetery, where they stood packed together for two days. They were released on 30 May. The mayor, the municipal secretary and the headmaster were held until 1 June as hostages who would be killed if even a single shot were fired in the area.

Why

From the outset the Germans justified the executions by claiming that their soldiers had been fired on by civilians – francs-tireurs, who were not protected by the Hague Conventions as soldiers were. Searches carried out by the Germans themselves found no weapons in the village. Then the story emerged that the Chasseurs Ardennais had changed into civilian clothes. Belgian veterans always firmly denied this, and no evidence has ever supported it. Historians point rather to a mechanism similar to that of 1914: inexperienced units, fired on from concealment on their flank and rear by soldiers using infiltration tactics, took them for partisans. Fury at the loss of many comrades, including several company commanders, turned into organised retaliation. Among the victims there was no one who was ever proved to have taken part in the fighting. None of these explanations justifies the crime. The killing of hostages, the use of civilians as a human shield and executions without trial were forbidden in 1940 as well.

In the same days other killings took place in Belgium and northern France: on 27 May soldiers of the SS “Totenkopf” division shot nearly a hundred British prisoners at Le Paradis, and on 28 May near Wormhoudt SS men of the “Leibstandarte” regiment murdered several dozen British and French prisoners. At Vinkt, however, the perpetrators were neither SS men nor police but an ordinary army infantry division of the Wehrmacht.

The trial

The German press denied the crime or explained it as the work of francs-tireurs. The British press, according to some authors, knew what had happened but wrote about it sparingly, for fear of being accused of repeating the exaggerated propaganda of 1914. After the liberation of Belgium the affair was investigated by the Belgian war crimes commission, whose report appeared at the end of the 1940s.

German officers were tried after the war. The year 1946, sometimes given, refers to an earlier stage of the case: according to the available accounts, in August 1946 the Belgians secured the extradition of one of the chief suspects, Major Erwin Kühner, from the American occupation zone of Germany. The trial itself took place later. In December 1948 Major Kühner and Franz Lohmann (also spelt Lohman in the sources), regarded as the main perpetrators of the organised executions, stood before a military court in Ghent. Survivors testified, and the photographs taken by German soldiers also served as evidence. Both defendants shifted the responsibility onto their superior, who had been killed on the Eastern Front in 1941. According to local Belgian studies the verdict was delivered on 8 December 1948. Most sources state that both were sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour. According to some sources the sentences were finally confirmed in 1950, which is why that date appears in some studies as the date of conviction. After about five years in prison both men were handed over to Germany and released.

Place in the war

Vinkt foreshadowed how the Wehrmacht was to treat the population of occupied countries. In the west in 1940 the German army generally behaved differently than in Poland, where in September 1939 crimes against prisoners and civilians, as at Ciepielów or Śladów, went hand in hand with the planned murder of the Polish intelligentsia in Operation Tannenberg. Vinkt showed, however, that in Western Europe too a stubborn defence, heavy losses and a rumour of francs-tireurs were enough for ordinary soldiers to start murdering defenceless people. The same pattern – collective punishment for alleged resistance – was repeated in later years in Bohemia at Lidice in 1942, and in 1944 in France at Oradour-sur-Glane, in Italy at Marzabotto and in the Netherlands at Putten, and in the occupied East on an incomparably greater scale.

The day after the massacre Belgium capitulated, and for four years the country came under German military administration. For a long time the memory of Vinkt remained local. This was due to the disputes over the explosion at Meigem, the accusations levelled at Belgian soldiers, and a sense that a crime committed by the “ordinary” army did not fit the picture of the 1940 campaign. In 1967–1968 a memorial bearing the names of the victims and rows of crosses was erected at Vinkt, and in 2013 a place of remembrance devoted to the days of May 1940 was opened beside it. On the memorial, alongside Vinkt and Meigem, the names of other villages that met the same fate were added, from Lidice and Oradour to Putten. Vinkt was portrayed in novels by the Flemish writer Monika Van Paemel and by the Walloon Xavier Hanotte, who made it an example of the silence surrounding war crimes.