WHEN I was at school I remember reading that the Nazi party won 90 per cent of the vote in a referendum held in Germany around 1933. Can you confirm this? - LD Wilson, Guisborough.

THE Nazis received 38 per cent of the German votes in July 1932 (14 million votes) and 44 per cent of the votes in March 1933. This last rise in the Nazi vote occurred after Hitler was appointed Chancellor and he used his position to increase Nazi support.

I am not aware that Nazi support ever reached 90 per cent but, by the end of March 1933, Hitler no longer needed this scale of public support and, through manipulation of political colleagues, he pushed through the Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, effectively making him dictator and voting out democracy in Germany.

Hitler worked his way into the centre of German government by being arguably the most successful propagandists of the 20th Century. Under the guise of socialism, he had secured the votes of working class people in an era of depression and heavy unemployment. He had needed no more than 44 per cent of the votes to secure the influential position of Chancellor. Once appointed Chancellor, Hitler added fear and intimidation to his weapons of propaganda and, through his control of the police and the military organisation, he was able to annihilate his enemies.

REGARDING the Burning Question regarding becks and burns (Dec 18), I live in Norton on Tees where my local streams are Billingham Beck and Lustrum Beck. Other waterways also seem to be called becks. Having had a look at my OS maps, your comment that County Durham lies on the burn/beck border is borne out. I note that there is a Crimdon Beck near Hartlepool but a Castle Eden Burn further up the coast. I also note a Nunthorpe Stell and Trenholme Stell, but wonder what a stell is? - David Mackintosh, Norton on Tees.

THE River Tees is overwhelmingly a beck area from source to sea, although there is a burn in the Billingham area called the North Burn. Beck is the predominant name for a stream in Yorkshire, Cumbria and south Durham and burn is used in North Durham and Northumberland.

There are other words for streams in the North but these are usually smaller waterways than becks and burns. They include gills and sikes, which are found mainly in upland areas. Sikes are especially common close to the river source. Creeks and stells are more closely associated with lowland areas. In Britain, a creek is specifically a saltwater stream that enters the sea.

Stell seems to be specifically a North Yorkshire and Durham word. According to dialect dictionaries, stells are very small lowland streams and are often nothing more than open drainage ditches with infirm banks. They are usually very tiny and often man-made. They occur near the coast or in poorly drained, marshy areas.

Wright's Dialect Dictionary says these ditches served as fences in lowland areas of south east Durham and Yorkshire near the sea. It is true that many of the stells flow in very straight lines for at least part of their course, perhaps betraying their man-made origins.