Vinkt massacre

As the German Army continued to advance west, pushing back both the British Expeditionary Force (trying to escape to Dunkirk) and the Belgian army, the village of Vinkt became an important target, as it lay both on the road south from Ghent to Lille, and astride the Schipdonk Canal that blocked the German advance to the west. However, on May 25, both sides already knew the outcome of the Battle for France: the French army had collapsed and the Belgian army had been reduced to prolonging the war for the sole purpose of protecting the British retreat.

The bridge over the Schipdonk Canal was being guarded by the 1st Belgian Division of Chasseurs Ardennais (which in the Belgian army of the day meant one regiment of tanks out of five regiments in a division - the rest being motor riders and cyclists). Coincidentally, this division turned out to be one of the most motivated in the Belgian army. The Belgian command decided not to destroy but to guard the bridge, so as to help as many British stragglers as possible on their way west, and as many Belgian refugees as possible on their way south: more than one million Belgians (most of them on foot, as cars and horses had been requisitioned by the different armies) had become refugees. News of what happened at Vinkt would cause an additional one million to flee south or even west. By the middle of June, according to Red Cross figures, 30% of the Belgian population had left the country.

Memorial to the victims of the massacre

Most sources claim between 86 and 140 victims, 86 being the total number of executed victims. The divergence stems from the fact that other historians include the victims in front of the bridge and those 27 killed by the explosion at the church in Meigem. Whereas the exploded grenade on May 25 was almost certainly German, the explosion at the church has usually been attributed to Belgian artillery. However, there remains a controversy over the church explosion, as some victims later claimed they saw German officers throw hand grenades into the church, and all women hostages were taken out of the church just before the explosion - ensuring that all 27 victims of the incident were male.

A very different picture was painted by the priest who managed to escape on May 27: he claimed to have seen dead women and children, even babies. Since no corpses of women or children were later found, this would imply, if true, that the scene was later cleaned up, and the real death toll of the executions is much higher than the 86 or 140 usually claimed. However, most Belgian historians believe that any additional refugee victims the priest saw, were killed in crossfire, and not intentionally.

The Vinkt massacre shares some strange similarities with the later massacre at Nemmersdorf (today Mayakovskoye) in East Prussia, where there are similar accusations of embellishment and manipulation after the fact and an attempt was made to include refugees killed in crossfire before a bridge among those executed.

As news of the carnage spread, German press sources denied it or excused it, claiming that Belgian civilians had dressed up as soldiers. Although British newspapers knew the exact story, they refused to press the point - because this had happened in Belgium, they were afraid of being accused that they were repeating the war propaganda claims they had made in 1914 with the exaggeration of "The Rape of Belgium".

On the Western Front, the Vinkt massacre was not only the first major infraction of the Geneva Convention by the German army, but also unique in that it was committed by an ordinary Wehrmacht unit, and not by a special SS unit, not even by the Waffen SS. It may be the only notable war crime of the Wehrmacht committed on the Western Front before 1944.

Although largely ignored outside Belgium, it did not go entirely unpunished. The German officers were tried after the war.[1]

• List of massacres in Belgium
• Le Paradis massacre - massacre of captured British soldiers (27 May 1940)
• Wormhoudt massacre - massacre of British and French prisoners (28 May 1940)

• Sebag-Montefiore, Hugh (2007). Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780141024370.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vinkt massacre.

• The story of four bloody days - from the Vinkt memorial website - in Dutch