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                        GEMS OF KNOWLEDGE

                               by

                           Cecil Adams

     Adolph Hitler spoke of the empire he was trying to build as
the Third Reich.  What were reichs One and Two? - Wilburforce,
Blue Mounds, Wisconsin

     According to a soon-to-be-published tome called 'The Hitler
Fact Book' by Thomas Fuchs (like I say, I get the most amazing
stuff in the mail), "the first reich was the Holy Roman Empire of
the Middle Ages; the second, the one established by Bismarck and
emded by Germany's defeat in 1918."  The term was a favorite of
Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels.  Hitler himself
wasn't that crazy about it, Fuchs notes; he outlawed the term at
the beginning of World War II and referred to his relm merely as
the Reich.  Another Nazi term, "Thousand Year Reich," supposedly
had its origin in a remark by Hitler following the purge of June
1934, when he had many of his one-time supporters murdered. 
Hitler said the victims had been plotting a revolt, and promised
there would be no more such strife for a thousand years.


     Both the question and the response were obtained, word for
word, from Cecil Adam's column in Baltimore City Paper.  "The
Straight Dope".  Cecil Adams also wrote two books, "The Straight
Dope" and "More of The Straight Dope", both published by Chicago
Review Press.  In these books, available at most bookstores, 
Cecil Adams answers wacky questions like the one above.  Some of
the questions are real weirdos.