On May 27, 1940, German forces took control of the Belgian village of Vinkt after days of heavy fighting along the Lys River. What followed was not an organized battle but a systematic series of executions that left more than one hundred civilians dead in a single day, making the massacre one of the largest crimes committed by the Wehrmacht during the Western Campaign. The violence unfolded during the broader Battle of France, which began on May 10, 1940, when Nazi Germany launched a coordinated offensive against France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. German armored units advanced rapidly, breaking through defensive lines while aircraft struck airfields, roads, and communication centers.
French forces suffered heavy defeats, and British troops were pushed back toward the English Channel coast. By May 24, the front line had reached the Scheldt Canal near Deinze, approximately 20 kilometers southwest of Ghent. The canal and its bridges were strategically vital, as control of these crossings determined movement toward the coast, where Allied troops were already being encircled near Dunkirk. At the same time, at least one million Belgian civilians were fleeing westward, many fearing a repetition of the atrocities committed by German soldiers during the First World War.
The Belgian First Division of the Chasseurs Ardennais, known as the Ardennes Hunters, was tasked with defending the canal line. Their mission was to hold the bridges as long as possible to keep open an escape route for Allied soldiers and refugees. Facing them was the German 225th Infantry Division, which had participated in the invasion of the Netherlands before moving into Belgium in late May. When units of the 225th Division reached the area, they encountered strong resistance from the Ardennes Hunters defending the canal crossings.
An attempt to seize the bridge at Deinze failed under Belgian artillery fire, and German troops suffered losses. Frustration among the soldiers grew, and German forces seized civilians in Deinze, using them as human shields while attempting to advance. Thirty-eight civilians were killed during this phase of the fighting. On May 26, a rumor spread among German troops that Belgian civilians had fired upon them.
Similar accusations had been made during the First World War and had led to brutal reprisals. Whether any civilians in Vinkt and Meigem actually took part in the fighting has never been proved, but many German soldiers accepted the rumor as fact, using it to justify collective punishment against the local population. That same day, dozens of inhabitants of Meigem were arrested and locked inside the village church as hostages. Families were separated, and fear spread through the streets.
The fighting line ran between the two villages, with Meigem already in German hands while Vinkt was still defended by Belgian troops. Civilians found themselves trapped between two armies. The situation escalated dramatically the next day. King Leopold III of Belgium had announced his intention to surrender, but until the formal capitulation, Belgian units continued to resist.
Throughout May 27, heavy fighting took place in and around Vinkt. In the afternoon, a powerful explosion struck the church in Meigem where the hostages were being held, killing 27 people on the spot. Later interpretations suggest Belgian artillery fire may have accidentally hit the building, as the church stood directly in the line of fire. For the German troops, however, the explosion reinforced their conviction that they were fighting not only soldiers but also hostile civilians.
By approximately 3:00 in the afternoon, German forces, particularly the 377th Infantry Regiment of the 225th Division, gained control of Vinkt. The Belgian defense collapsed, and the village fell. What followed was systematic reprisal. German soldiers pushed inhabitants from their houses, kicked in doors, and forced families into the streets.
Women and children were separated from the men and gathered on a local farmer’s meadow. The men were marched toward Meigem before being forced to turn around and run back toward Vinkt in rows of five. Executions took place in several locations. Elderly men were shot against the wall of a local monastery.
Sixteen people were executed at the wall of the clergyman’s house. On the village square, 38 people were lined up and shot; four survived, severely wounded, lying among the bodies of neighbors and relatives. At a place known as the Zwarte Haakster, 11 men were executed and buried in a mass grave. Additional shootings occurred elsewhere in the village.
By the end of the day, 111 people had died on May 27 alone, either by execution or as a result of artillery fire and combat. The violence did not stop there. On the morning of May 28, King Leopold III announced the Belgian capitulation, and officially, fighting in Belgium was over. Yet nine more inhabitants were executed in Vinkt that day.
They had been forced to dig their own graves before being shot, demonstrating that the killings were not the result of immediate combat heat but of deliberate decision. Over the four days of fighting and reprisals in Vinkt and Meigem, a total of 140 people lost their lives. Eighty-six were deliberately murdered in executions, and 27 died in the church explosion. The remaining victims were killed by shelling and crossfire during combat.
News of the massacre spread rapidly and contributed to a second wave of civilians fleeing Belgium. More than one million Belgians left the country in panic. By June 1940, according to estimates by the Red Cross, around 30 percent of the Belgian population was outside the country’s borders. After the German victory in the West, the 225th Infantry Division remained on occupation duty until the end of 1941.
In January 1942, it was transferred to the Eastern Front following the Soviet counteroffensive near Moscow. There, it became part of Army Group North and participated in major operations, including the Siege of Leningrad and battles near Lake Ilmen and Demyansk. The division suffered heavy losses over the following years, with thousands of its soldiers killed. In 1944, during the Soviet Baltic Offensive, Army Group North was cut off in western Latvia, forming what became known as the Courland Pocket.
Adolf Hitler refused to allow evacuation despite advice from his senior officers. More than 200,000 German troops were trapped in the pocket. After months of Soviet offensives, the remaining German forces surrendered in May 1945. Approximately 135,000 German soldiers laid down their arms on the Courland Peninsula.
Many were taken into Soviet captivity and sent to forced labor camps. According to various sources, more than a third of German prisoners of war died in the Soviet Union as a result of hard labor, malnutrition, or brutal camp conditions. After the war, Belgian authorities investigated the massacre. Erwin Kühner and Franz Lohmann were identified as responsible officers and brought before a Belgian court.
In 1950, both were sentenced to 20 years of forced labor. The massacres in Vinkt and Meigem stand as a reminder that even in the early days of the Second World War, long before the full-scale atrocities of the Eastern Front, units of the German army carried out deliberate killings of civilians in Western Europe.
