In a World, where history was shaped by wars and empires.
One Ruler... err... scratch that! EVERY RULER… dreams of their one and true love! “To have…
a super soldier!” Welcome to Nutty History! You may have heard of Achilles, of Beowulf,
and of Captain America! But one Prussian King raised a real army of Super Soldiers, by hiring…
EVERY. TALL. BOII. Wait… what? Tall Boiis? Were these Super Soldiers or a Basketball team?
There is no denying that every ruler to rule any state or country in the world has been fascinated
about having super soldiers in their army. But Germany has a weird relationship with them. Now
we all know how badly one particular dictator with a weird mustache wanted to have super soldiers to
win the second world war. Apart from searching for mythical artifacts and conducting inhumane
medical experiments, Hitler even tried to enhance his soldiers by drugging them with amphetamines.
Walter White perhaps missed his best possible client by a few decades. But surprisingly,
Adolf Hitler was not the first German ruler to chase the myth of Super Soldiers. Long before ‘das
Fuhrer’ tried to implement racial supremacy with super soldiers, King Frederick William
first assembled the original batch of German Avengers, called Grand Grenadiers of Potsdam.
Grand Grenadiers of Potsdam were also known as Lange Kerle. That literally means “Long Dudes”.
There wasn’t even a biologically enhancing serum or some bionic implant to become King Frederick
William’s super-soldier. The mere qualification was to have a height of six feet two inches.
It may sound like a qualification for a joy ride in a theme park for us. But in the 1700s, being
the tall freak was actually freaky for common peasants, who measured somewhere between two to
three turnips from malnourishment. Even the king himself was merely five feet three inches tall!
And the benefits of being part of the “I fix ceiling fans without stepladder” regiment were
well above-average. The “Potsdam Giants”, again not a basketball team name which is quite a shame,
were treated like personal royal guards of the King himself. The regiment was preferred for
the best equipment and gear and got perks in the salaries as well. They lived a good, tall life!
Long before his ascension to the throne, Frederick William became the nominal commander of the
regiment in 1688. This is perhaps the time when his obsession with tall soldiers began.
He confided to a French ambassador: “The most beautiful girl or woman in the world
would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers, they are my weakness.”
Okay so maybe he didn’t say oh but you get the point? Super-soldiers apparently worked as an
aphrodisiac for some heads of states! The Prussian King made an exemplary regiment of
the longest men from all over Prussia by forcing military service to every guy who had the height
to catch a good cell reception. Even his friendly kings and emperors from other European countries
joined in and started sending him their tallest men as “gifts”. One of the tallest soldiers in
the Skyscraper Services was the Irishman James Kirkland. He was approximately 2.17 m or 7 and
a half feet in height. Daniel Cajanus, the famous Finnish giant, was also a member of the regiment.
And not just Finnish and Irishman, lanky lads of Ottoman and Russian empires too became part of
this weird human collection. And we say collection because this was only a regiment for formality.
This endeavor was more like a King’s plaything, you know, a herd of slaves.
First, he tried to pair these absolute units with the tallest girls of Prussia
to breed more such fine gentlemen who would have likely suffered from gigantism their whole life.
But that little experiment didn’t work out very well, so he made the regiment his source of
entertainment. Even on his deathbed, King Frederick William would order the Potsdam
Giants to march up and down for his pleasure. He would also exhibit them proudly to ambassadors
and kings as some sort of the eighth wonder of the world. The soldiers would also wear
eighteen-inch-long headgear while parading, perhaps in hopes of reaching the stratosphere.
By the time King Frederick William the First died in 1740, there were about 2500 to 3200 soldiers
in the Potsdam Giants Regiment. As most were forcibly enlisted, not a lot of them had any
training to be a proper soldier except how to parade. They never saw a day on the battlefield,
until the new King Frederick the Great, son of Fredrick William I, ordered them to march in
the Seven Years’ War. Their woeful performance in the war got them decommissioned from regiment to
a battalion. Yet, their days never got better in the following years either. The battalion formally
surrendered after a sound thumping by Napoleon in 1806. Yes, Napoleon, the man whose lack of height
has always been a social currency in history. Ironic. Thanks for watching Nutty History.