Third Reich was shortest of three German realms
The medical name for a toe is phalange. The name is derived from the Greek word “phalanx”, which means a straight projection.
Only the big toe has its own name – hallux – and the other toes are simply numbered, from 2 to 5.
So the names may be rather boring, but the toes are anything but.
Did you know, for example, that when walking, each time your heel lifts off the ground it forces the toes to carry one half of your body weight.
Or that Russian dictator Joseph Stalin suffered from syndactyly, meaning that some of his toes were webbed. I’VE seen lots of war movies and documentaries, so I know that Hitler’s Nazi regime was called the Third Reich.
So my query is really quite simple – what were the first two Reichs? – P.
On August 19, 1934, a plebiscite was put to the German people, asking whether Hitler should become head of state as Führer and Reich Chancellor.
Thirty-eight million Germans voted in favour (four million opposed the move) and at a party rally in Nuremberg in September Hitler declared: “In the next thousand years there will be no other revolution in Germany”.
That was the starting point of the so-called 1000-year Third Reich which, of course, only lasted 11 years.
The German term “Reich” translates as “Realm”, and the First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire (the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, not the ancient Roman Empire).
It began when Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day, 800.
The Reich existed almost in name only following the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the 30 Years’ War in 1648, but was not formally dissolved until 1806.
The Second Reich was the Hohenzollern Germany, from the unification of Germany following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) to the abdication of Wilhelm II (pictured) in 1919 following the German defeat in the First World War.