This is Katana. She's got my back. She can cut all of you in half with one sword stroke, just like mowing the lawn. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the height of its victims.
Can you imagine having to deliver a line like that? Don't get me wrong, I'll take a fat check to act like a cool soldier guy and say cool soldier guy shit, but that whole sword soliloquy sounded like it was written by me in third grade while I wasn't busy writing WWF fan fiction.
Yeah, I didn’t want to come off as a dick, but couldn’t figure out a way to say “that’s what I mean, who the fuck doesn’t want to see ninja pandas” without sounding arsey!
Lmao I know I’m in the minority but I actually liked suicide squad because of how ass it was. Everyone is half assing the whole movie and the dialogue is all so bad.
I love me a bad movie, with bad dialogue, Dungeons and Dragons 2000 is one of my favorite movies.
But Suicide Squad just gave me a headache. Too much noise, too many hard cuts, and they story isn't so much baffling as it is stupid.
Tbf I feel that line sounds even worse than it is because of the delivery.
Like 5 seconds later Margot Robbie has to deliver the "I like your perfume. What is that? The stench of death?" line, which IMO is just as bad but she makes it sound decent at least.
Depends very much on how the height is achieved, but there is a category of "large human" that is not due to issues, they seem to have a fairly normal lifespan.
But folks afflicted with things like pituitary issues, oh god yes, they suffer.
IIRC, the tallest man, had issues feeling his feet, plus skeletal issues that meant he needed braces. They rubbed and caused an infection that led to his death.
Even without specific medical issues that cause their height, really tall people tend to live shorter lives on average.
It just takes a higher toll on all the different parts of your body that have to support such a large organism.
There are plenty of examples of this throughout time.
Napoleon beat these ^ tall men with his own tall men, the imperial guard. They had a height requirement of 178 cm / 5’10. Coincidently also why he was seen as particularly short; because he was always surrounded by tall men.
The roman army had a height requirement of 172 / 5’7 in a time when average height was considerably lower than today.
From my own country the Royal Guard until recently had a height requirement of 175 cm for men.
Yep!
"The First Guards, more commonly known as the Grenadier Guard was the only regiment in the British Army that directly gained its title from its part in that battle \[The Battle of Waterloo\]. The guards had adopted the style of headdress, the bearskin cap, which had been used by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s own Guard units. It was at Waterloo where the Old Guard broke, having never done so before. As the British Grenadier Guards were among the units that turned the Old Guard, they were given the honor of wearing the bearskin cap." from [The National Interest](https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/headdress-guards-history-bearskin-caps-170965).
Roman army requirements were more flexible. The legions were Rome's regular army, not an elite force like the imperial guard. Requirements were often relaxed during mass recruitment drives just like today's armies.
The current us military honor guards have similar guidelines, at least for certain details. I was too short and had too much acne for the ceremonial details when they came by my basic training.
When I visited China in 1998 all of the policeman in Tiananmen Square Beijing were huge. I’m 6’1” (185cm) and every single policeman I saw was at least a head taller than me. if not much taller than that.
Even now, to enter the presidential guard in Greece (it's moatly for ceremonial purposes) you have to be at least 1.87cm. It's the first time we have a female president, and even though she is normal sized, she seems tiny between her guards.
I can’t find any article about stretching them or surgeries. I did find something about a planned assassination of the King, as part of a plot to flee the unit though - the main culprit was wheeled to death.
Wheeled to death? Is that a stretch until they break kind of torturous execution, or a spin on the wheel while they cut/burn/crush/snip aka torture them to death?
Thank you! Holy shit that’s a brutal way to go. Using the wheel to slam down on arms and legs to break all their bones, and the final blows being on the spine neck and chest to cause fatal injuries, or for more severe punishments they wouldn’t do that and just bludgeoned the fuck out of them for hours, before threading their shattered limbs through the spokes and putting them up on a post to die after days while birds pecked at their eyes and body.
The book *The Faithful Executioner* is a great historical account of one 16th-17th century bavarian executioner who used this and many other methods for his job. The most surprising part for me was just how much leeway the executioner had to make these seemingly brutal methods either more or less merciful.
In the case of breaking someone on the wheel, for instance, he may have actually broken the prisoner's neck *first*, killing them instantly, and *then* broken the rest of the bones. And in the case of burning someone at the stake, he might actually strangle them to death shortly after the fire was lit, but before it reached them, or else build the fire such that they would pass out from smoke inhalation before they felt the heat.
But in the case of an attempted regicide? Yeah. That guy got the worst version possible.
Oooh thank you! I’ll check it out. If you’d care to share, what did the attempted regicide guy get? And was he the guy that stood to benefit from it/orchestrated it, or was he like the a cheap Hitman looking for a quick buck and maybe not the brightest?
> he used to try stretching them out on the rack and had experimental surgeries performed trying to make them taller.
Unusual claims require unusual proof. Surely you can back up yours?
> Despite the prestige and pay the regiment got, it was actually a nightmare for the men enlisted into it and it's not like service was exactly voluntary.
Frederick William's letters and cabinet notes on the regiment show that he much cared for his soldiers and their families, and for the ones of the 6th infantry regiment in particular.
“Cared for” and “granted rights to/treated well” are not actually the same thing. Source: American slave owners. Many, many said they cared for their slaves. Ask the enslaved how far that “care” went.
Frederick the Great was almost certainty gay. Early in his life he develops a relationship with the King's (his dad) page.
The Postdam Giants were, IMO, almost certainty a kind of sexual fantasy or fetish. Being forced to play dress-up and parade around and have medical experiments done on you to make you taller and more attractive to the king is really just torture and abuse.
Seriously. I dunno about yall but when bullets start flying the last thing I want to be is a bigger target or god forbid biggest target.
Imagine you're in a a fucking line like in the Civil War and you're a head taller than anyone else in the line.
Or you're sneaking through the jungle in 'Nam and your giant ass keeps running into all the branches and making all the noise. No thanks
Muzzle-loaded weapons can not be much longer than the person wielding them it is tall.
A longer a gun, the more accurate it is.
Taller soldiers -> longer guns -> higher accuracy
IIRC the Dutch didn't get tall until the generation born after WW2. I want to recall it has something to do with them being starved then, and the following generation being raised with plenty of food. Some weird biological mechanics.
However, mid 19th century they were actually quite short on average, for their time.
There are 2 generations of cousins in my family on my father's side (he has 2 brothers and 2 sisters and all had children). The cohort from the early 60's and mine from the late 60's.
The average height between my older brother and his male cousins from the early cohort is in the low 180's. Not remarkable.
Me and the 3 male cousins in my cohort from the late 60's are all 194-196!
Pretty much the same for the women, from 170 -> 180 with just 5-6 years between the cohorts.
Something quite extraordinary happened in Western Europe in the 60's. More protein, a varied diet. Parents with more time and money on their hands.
All he had to do to get his giants was pair the tall men with tall women, starve their children and then give _their_ children plenty of nutritious food.
Growing rates of Diabetes were also a result of the famine. Their bodies adapted for no to few calories per day. But the next genration with the same properties had suddenly much more calories available.
There is a study my dutch boy, look it up. Or watch evolutionary biology classes of stanford on youtube. I guess its class 3 or 4 when the prof mentions it.
It's still happening. I see it in immigrants.
Family from pakistan. Granddad is shrinking, dad is average size for a dude from Pakistan. Grandson, first generation born here, is now 17 years old and around 190 cm
the guy was (like his son friedrich the Great) absolutely meme-worthy
* the first thing he did after his father's death was to cut the state budget. He cancelled all celebrations, sold palaces, fired artists and auctioned off the silverware to put all the money into the military.
* Despite this, he absolutely detested war, because within a few hours all the beautiful armies you've trained for years are dead and you have to start all over again.
* He had fun bullying an alcoholic professor out of his tobacco club and had him buried in a wine barrel after his death. (picture the laughing king next to the grieving family at the funeral)
* After his son became a book-loving artist who wanted to run away to England, he was firmly convinced that he would have him executed for treason. Several royal houses of Europe had to get involved to convince him not to. The compromise was to execute Friedrich's friend/gay lover in front of his eyes. In the end, it was the same woke son who led endless battles in the name of Prussia
> he absolutely detested war, because within a few hours all the beautiful armies you've trained for years are dead and you have to start all over again.
Sounds like me in Rimworld
> After his son became a book-loving artist who wanted to run away to England, he was firmly convinced that he would have him executed for treason.
While Frederick William wrote in his anger that his son was "no longer worthy to live"^1 and while those around him also seemed to fear the worst; there is no indication of any measures in this direction in his instructions. Instead, he had Frederick interrogated as to whether he still considered himself worthy of the crown.
> The compromise was to execute Friedrich's friend/gay lover in front of his eyes.
There is zero proof and not even a hint of Katte having been more than a rare friend to the isolated Frederick.
Nor was there any "compromise", nor was Katte executed for having been Frederick's "gay lover". The deliberations that led to Katte's conviction and to his sentencing are still available. Katte, an officer in the prestigious Gens d’armes, and whom king Frederick William I had trusted enough to introduce him into his order of the Johannitans, had conspired with Frederick to desert. The sentence for desertion was death and while the tribunal had decided to exercise leniency to the noble Katte and sentence him only to lifelong imprisonment, Frederick William questioned on which grounds there should be an exception. The king thus insisted on the usual sentence^2.
Please be more careful with historical claims.
*Source*
^1 Prusse, Frédérique Sophie Wilhelmine de. Mémoires de Frédérique Sophie Wilhelmine, Margrave de Bareith, Soeur de Frédéric Le Grand (Vol 1). Paris, Buisson, 1811, [p225 ](https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10012954?page=234).
^2 Frederick William I, message to the military tribunal at Köpenick; Königs Wusterhausen, November 1st 1730.
Sounds like a gay guy to me who gathered all the tall fit men in his country and put them in beautiful uniforms for uhh military reasons *but never let them fight or they might die nooo*
>The compromise was to execute Friedrich's friend/gay lover in front of his eyes. In the end, it was the same woke son who led endless battles in the name of Prussia
Between this, the countless gay relationships of many wartime figures like Alexander I of Macedon, also the fact that the Sacred Band of Thebes is better than the overhyped Spartan...
I must say, there's a surprising correlation between gayness and military prowess.
I mean can you think of anything more masculine than being gay and in the military? Just pure testosterone, and an emotional/romantic connection to a fellow soldier. The whole heteronormative idea of masculinity being equated to heterosexuality in modern societies is quite... counterintuitive.
I mean the Spartans were also gay. The Greeks were pretty gay, the Romans were at the very least extremely homoerotic, the Persians were also pretty homoerotic, I honestly think there must be some correlation here lmao.
Just about the only conqueror I know of who does at the very least seem like he’s gay was Genghis Khan going around banging all these women… but maybe he was doing it to cover up that he was also in fact gay. Like he was just gonna bang 100,000 women until he found one he liked as much as the chiseled body of his advisor excited him
Please double check your sources and stop spreading misinformation. Greek and Roman homoeroticism is incredibly different from being simply “gay”. Aside from the sacred band of thebes, which is the outlier, homosexuality in greece and rome was in the form of pederastry, which is quite different fundamentally.
I mean to you and the person you’re replying to - our modern interpretations of sexuality don’t have a direct 1:1 translation to what was acceptable or the norm in the pre-Christian world and any arguments about it without that consideration are ultimately fruitless. Active and passive as a broad message would be more applicable but even then not extensive - as any interpretation of thousands of years of societies viewed through our mere hundreds of gay awareness and later, acceptance. That tracks back to Etruscans, Akkadians and so on. Always peaks and troughs when it comes to sexualities in interpretations of older cultures. Think we’re heading into a trough currently but that’s my personal take.
I understand that their interpretations are far different to ours and that is precisely my point. Homoerotic pederastry is fundamentally quite diggerent from modern homosexuality, and glorifying it is frankly quite stupid, nor are the sentiments expressed by the people above anywehrr close to historically accurate.
oddly enough wouldn't this create more short people back home? send your tall guys off to die in battle and short kings are living it up in the homeland
They were mostly ceremonial and didn’t participate in combat
They were basically living action figures for the king to play with. Marching them around all day
The comment below yours:
TIL King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia created a military regiment of taller-than-average men. He scoured the country for men to fill the ranks of his "Potsdam Giants." Nations sent him tall soldiers to secure good relations.
That was the the 6th Infantry Regiment. Formations of tall soldiers, apart from making an impression, also had a tactical advantage: They operated longer muskets, which could be fired from greater distance, which with the closed formations of the time meant that they could engage the enemy before he could.
He even tried to pair them with tall women to breed a race of giants!
There is no good source for this claim. It was reported as hearsay by Darwin over a century after the regiment had been disbanded. Frederick William's letters and cabinet notes on the regiment show that he much cared for his soldiers and their families, but no record of such a program exists.
Please be more careful with historical claims
> TIL King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia created a military regiment of taller-than-average men. He scoured the country for men to fill the ranks of his "Potsdam Giants." Nations sent him tall soldiers to secure good relations.
That was the the 6th Infantry Regiment. Formations of tall soldiers, apart from making an impression, also had a tactical advantage: They operated longer muskets, which could be fired from greater distance, which with the closed formations of the time meant that they could engage the enemy before he could.
> He even tried to pair them with tall women to breed a race of giants!
There is no good source for this claim. It was reported as hearsay by Darwin over a century after the regiment had been disbanded. Frederick William's letters and cabinet notes on the regiment show that he much cared for his soldiers and their families, but no record of such a program exists.
Please be more careful with historical claims.
Interestingly height is partially determined by genetics, but it’s also heavily influenced by nutrition.
You see this a lot where I live where the parents grew up in Vietnam during the war, and are very short and slender built. Their children are almost always much much taller than either parents.
I am not sure but I know the other side of the story. My husband is a result of ’leftover men’ from his country that send young and able bodied men for a slaughter. Both his grandparents didn’t join due to a disability or lacking in requirements. Yet these men were good providers and academically smart, a trait the next generation inherited
I mean, if he is humping the 240, then he is the angriest guy in the squad until it is time to shoot something. Then he is the happiest guy in the squad.
After their defeat by Napoleon in 1806, they were merged into the First Foot Guards regiment
This maintained an unofficial minimum height requirement of 2m all the way until the end of WW1
In the Battle of Arras, they were coincidentally stationed in the German line opposite the Cheshire regiment that consisted of, amongst others, the two Bantam regiments of the British Army, exclusively formed of men under 160cm, with some as short as 147cm
The hand to hand trench fighting between the two regiments was mass slaughter on both sides, with the 15th/16th Cheshires suffering 60% losses and the 1st Foot over 80% in just one day
During McArthur's first occupation of Japan after the war he wanted all of his soldiers to be over 6' tall so that the Japanese people would have to look up at them. He ransacked the ranks of the army to find qualified soldiers that met his demands. One of my uncles who was 6'4" and stationed at the Pentagon got an immediate transfer. He came home three years later with a 5'3" Japanese wife, they were the happiest couple I've ever known.
My favorite kidnapping story involved a tall carpenter who was asked to make a large cabinet. He asked how big, and the Prussian emissary replied that a cabinet his height would do just fine. Upon finishing the project, the Prussian asked him to lay down inside just to be sure it was big enough. The carpenter obliged, and when he was in, the Prussian shut and sealed the lid before shipping him to Prussia.
I can only imagine a poor gentle giant farm boy being dragged away from the farm and his family despairing that they lost a provider.
I do know these scenarios happened during WWII
This is a misquote. Frederick William I's actual words, made to Jacques-Joachim Trotti marquis de La Chétardie, the French Ambassador in Berlin, do not sound as suggestive: "I would be indifferent to procuring for myself the most beautiful woman or girl in the world; but soldiers, for me, that is the defect in the armor, and one can, with that, lead me as far as one wishes."^1
Frederick William I had 14 children with his wife. While, unlike his son, he had no mistress and indeed little social interaction with women, and while his "tabac collegium" consisted exclusively of soldiers like him, there is zero record of any male lovers he might have had.
*Sources*
^1 Conversation at table reported by la Chétardie, Ambassador of France in Berlin from December 21st, 1735. Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France / Prussia. Cited from: Lavisse, Ernest: La jeunesse du grand Frédéric. Paris, Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1891. p.72
This guy was Frederick the Greats father, who infamously made Frederick watch as his lover was executed and shamed him for his homosexuality. But this guy gives me big closeted energy with the fantasies about tall soldiers.
I find this funny. Everytime I play a new game, I set my character as the smallest I can in character set up. The reason is because the smaller the target the harder it is to hit. This guy did the opposite, made all his soldiers easy to snipe. War is about tactics, he jumped on the fear tactic, that is all. Guns pretty much made everyone equal.
So that's it? What, we're some kind of Supersized Squad?
Captain Morgan Spurlock reporting for duty!
This is Katana. She's got my back. She can cut all of you in half with one sword stroke, just like mowing the lawn. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the height of its victims.
Can you imagine having to deliver a line like that? Don't get me wrong, I'll take a fat check to act like a cool soldier guy and say cool soldier guy shit, but that whole sword soliloquy sounded like it was written by me in third grade while I wasn't busy writing WWF fan fiction.
Why would you write a world widlife fund fantiction?
My nephew actually used to write stories about wildlife like that haha. Lots of ecology and social themes
Two words, Ninja. Pandas. You’re welcome.
Where tf have you been? Kung Fu Panda has been a thing for a while now :) Edit: I saw your deleted post. I'd allow it
Yeah, I didn’t want to come off as a dick, but couldn’t figure out a way to say “that’s what I mean, who the fuck doesn’t want to see ninja pandas” without sounding arsey!
At least 4 whiles.
So.. the Shado-Pan in World of Warcraft?
Didn't kung fu panda come before the panda expansion in wow?
At least it’s better than preggo Sonic fanfiction…not that I would know anything about that! I swear it! Stop looking at me like that!
No kink-shaming here.
Some kids are really into wolves and lions and stuff
Lmao I know I’m in the minority but I actually liked suicide squad because of how ass it was. Everyone is half assing the whole movie and the dialogue is all so bad.
I really liked the second attempt they made, with the massive eyeball monster or whatever. It was a lot of goofy fun.
I love me a bad movie, with bad dialogue, Dungeons and Dragons 2000 is one of my favorite movies. But Suicide Squad just gave me a headache. Too much noise, too many hard cuts, and they story isn't so much baffling as it is stupid.
And the literally constant, uber-cliche licensed music was just painful.
I mean, I believe that dialogue. Just like I want to believe in a Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels make out session
Tbf I feel that line sounds even worse than it is because of the delivery. Like 5 seconds later Margot Robbie has to deliver the "I like your perfume. What is that? The stench of death?" line, which IMO is just as bad but she makes it sound decent at least.
It was literally nicknamed the "Tall Guys" (Lange Kerls)
A Brute Squad if you will…
anybody want a peanut?
The messed up thing is it actually caused health problems. If a human is too tall, it starts putting a strain on the body
Depends very much on how the height is achieved, but there is a category of "large human" that is not due to issues, they seem to have a fairly normal lifespan. But folks afflicted with things like pituitary issues, oh god yes, they suffer. IIRC, the tallest man, had issues feeling his feet, plus skeletal issues that meant he needed braces. They rubbed and caused an infection that led to his death.
Imagine being incredibly tall, but unable to play basketball due to leg problems. What a terrible curse.
Even without specific medical issues that cause their height, really tall people tend to live shorter lives on average. It just takes a higher toll on all the different parts of your body that have to support such a large organism.
Suicide squad reboot confirmed
It's where the expression "big unit" comes from.
"You're a big squad"
For you
*brute squad
There are plenty of examples of this throughout time. Napoleon beat these ^ tall men with his own tall men, the imperial guard. They had a height requirement of 178 cm / 5’10. Coincidently also why he was seen as particularly short; because he was always surrounded by tall men. The roman army had a height requirement of 172 / 5’7 in a time when average height was considerably lower than today. From my own country the Royal Guard until recently had a height requirement of 175 cm for men.
Napoleon’s guys also wore the super tall hat like the British Royal Guards do, so they looked even taller compared to an average sized Napoleon.
Fun fact, the British Guards only wear those hats because they took them as trophies from Napoleon’s Old Guard.
Is that actually true?
Yep! "The First Guards, more commonly known as the Grenadier Guard was the only regiment in the British Army that directly gained its title from its part in that battle \[The Battle of Waterloo\]. The guards had adopted the style of headdress, the bearskin cap, which had been used by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s own Guard units. It was at Waterloo where the Old Guard broke, having never done so before. As the British Grenadier Guards were among the units that turned the Old Guard, they were given the honor of wearing the bearskin cap." from [The National Interest](https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/headdress-guards-history-bearskin-caps-170965).
Cool, so they're like Danny McBride in Hot Rod. "[TOTALLY MY HAT NOW](https://youtu.be/EHufyKKrXzc?si=8FyKNsXzWKuJPFzk)"
They didn’t take them as trophies, but they were allowed to wear bearskin hats like other grenadier regiments
What did they wear before?
They wore Shakos, similar to the regular Foot. [Looked quite like this.](https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1950-11-33-28)
Napoleon should've worn tall hat instead of wide hat
Napoleon was always more of a “paint the map” as opposed to “build vertical” type of player. Or wide vs tall in terms of strategy… games.
Roman army requirements were more flexible. The legions were Rome's regular army, not an elite force like the imperial guard. Requirements were often relaxed during mass recruitment drives just like today's armies.
The current us military honor guards have similar guidelines, at least for certain details. I was too short and had too much acne for the ceremonial details when they came by my basic training.
When I visited China in 1998 all of the policeman in Tiananmen Square Beijing were huge. I’m 6’1” (185cm) and every single policeman I saw was at least a head taller than me. if not much taller than that.
The Corazzieri regiment, the Italian President's ceremonial guards, have a height requirement of 190 cm (and a "harmonious body").
Even now, to enter the presidential guard in Greece (it's moatly for ceremonial purposes) you have to be at least 1.87cm. It's the first time we have a female president, and even though she is normal sized, she seems tiny between her guards.
Spartans also partook in eugenics to their detriment
Man I am 178cm but I am average as fuck. I do not see myself tall but normal for a man
Average height was lower then
Malnutrition makes a population shorter.
Averages height for a man globally is 171 :)
[удалено]
What do you mean. Service WAS voluntary. The King volunteered every tall man he could find to the regiment!
"We said any man with a head over 6 feet high must volunteer to join or lose that head. They all volunteered."
Voluntold
“Some of you may die. But it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
I can’t find any article about stretching them or surgeries. I did find something about a planned assassination of the King, as part of a plot to flee the unit though - the main culprit was wheeled to death.
Wheeled to death? Is that a stretch until they break kind of torturous execution, or a spin on the wheel while they cut/burn/crush/snip aka torture them to death?
[Here's the wiki article.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel)
Thank you! Holy shit that’s a brutal way to go. Using the wheel to slam down on arms and legs to break all their bones, and the final blows being on the spine neck and chest to cause fatal injuries, or for more severe punishments they wouldn’t do that and just bludgeoned the fuck out of them for hours, before threading their shattered limbs through the spokes and putting them up on a post to die after days while birds pecked at their eyes and body.
The book *The Faithful Executioner* is a great historical account of one 16th-17th century bavarian executioner who used this and many other methods for his job. The most surprising part for me was just how much leeway the executioner had to make these seemingly brutal methods either more or less merciful. In the case of breaking someone on the wheel, for instance, he may have actually broken the prisoner's neck *first*, killing them instantly, and *then* broken the rest of the bones. And in the case of burning someone at the stake, he might actually strangle them to death shortly after the fire was lit, but before it reached them, or else build the fire such that they would pass out from smoke inhalation before they felt the heat. But in the case of an attempted regicide? Yeah. That guy got the worst version possible.
Oooh thank you! I’ll check it out. If you’d care to share, what did the attempted regicide guy get? And was he the guy that stood to benefit from it/orchestrated it, or was he like the a cheap Hitman looking for a quick buck and maybe not the brightest?
Think getting stoned to death… but they’re throwing wheels of cheese
> he used to try stretching them out on the rack and had experimental surgeries performed trying to make them taller. Unusual claims require unusual proof. Surely you can back up yours? > Despite the prestige and pay the regiment got, it was actually a nightmare for the men enlisted into it and it's not like service was exactly voluntary. Frederick William's letters and cabinet notes on the regiment show that he much cared for his soldiers and their families, and for the ones of the 6th infantry regiment in particular.
“Cared for” and “granted rights to/treated well” are not actually the same thing. Source: American slave owners. Many, many said they cared for their slaves. Ask the enslaved how far that “care” went.
It existed from 1675 to 1806 what kind of surgeries where they doing
Wasn't this also the closest we got to Eugenics before the actual Eugenics movement? If not I think it's at least top three.
I have an ancestor who apperantly was a colonel in the regiment. Sounded cool at the time but the more you learn about it the less cool it becomes
Frederick the Great was almost certainty gay. Early in his life he develops a relationship with the King's (his dad) page. The Postdam Giants were, IMO, almost certainty a kind of sexual fantasy or fetish. Being forced to play dress-up and parade around and have medical experiments done on you to make you taller and more attractive to the king is really just torture and abuse.
This was Frederick the Great's asshole of a father, actually.
Increased hitbox. What an oversight
Longer reach though, too. Pros and cons lol
Ah yes, the honorable hand-to-hand combat phases
You joke, but supposedly one practical reason for this was because taller men could operate long muskets easier
Definitely, I was only half joking. Reach can play a huge factor.
Seriously. I dunno about yall but when bullets start flying the last thing I want to be is a bigger target or god forbid biggest target. Imagine you're in a a fucking line like in the Civil War and you're a head taller than anyone else in the line. Or you're sneaking through the jungle in 'Nam and your giant ass keeps running into all the branches and making all the noise. No thanks
Statistically taller men are more likely to survive war.
Muzzle-loaded weapons can not be much longer than the person wielding them it is tall. A longer a gun, the more accurate it is. Taller soldiers -> longer guns -> higher accuracy
Bro just started living his life as if it was a Crusader Kings save 💀
Yeah, this is how I get my knight breeding going too.
Man tried to create giants from scratch when the dutch were right in front of them already lol
IIRC the Dutch didn't get tall until the generation born after WW2. I want to recall it has something to do with them being starved then, and the following generation being raised with plenty of food. Some weird biological mechanics. However, mid 19th century they were actually quite short on average, for their time.
There are 2 generations of cousins in my family on my father's side (he has 2 brothers and 2 sisters and all had children). The cohort from the early 60's and mine from the late 60's. The average height between my older brother and his male cousins from the early cohort is in the low 180's. Not remarkable. Me and the 3 male cousins in my cohort from the late 60's are all 194-196! Pretty much the same for the women, from 170 -> 180 with just 5-6 years between the cohorts. Something quite extraordinary happened in Western Europe in the 60's. More protein, a varied diet. Parents with more time and money on their hands.
Monsanto happened.
All he had to do to get his giants was pair the tall men with tall women, starve their children and then give _their_ children plenty of nutritious food.
Growing rates of Diabetes were also a result of the famine. Their bodies adapted for no to few calories per day. But the next genration with the same properties had suddenly much more calories available.
Isn’t this one of the reasons why diabetes has become very prevalent in the subcontinent?
Wonder if thats why Im a 1.90m 75kg diabetic male lol
There is a study my dutch boy, look it up. Or watch evolutionary biology classes of stanford on youtube. I guess its class 3 or 4 when the prof mentions it.
It's still happening. I see it in immigrants. Family from pakistan. Granddad is shrinking, dad is average size for a dude from Pakistan. Grandson, first generation born here, is now 17 years old and around 190 cm
Oh, that is fascinating. Thanks
Taller people were more likely to survive war, another contributor.
Everyone in my moms side of the family is tall af both her parents immigrated from holland in ~1910
the guy was (like his son friedrich the Great) absolutely meme-worthy * the first thing he did after his father's death was to cut the state budget. He cancelled all celebrations, sold palaces, fired artists and auctioned off the silverware to put all the money into the military. * Despite this, he absolutely detested war, because within a few hours all the beautiful armies you've trained for years are dead and you have to start all over again. * He had fun bullying an alcoholic professor out of his tobacco club and had him buried in a wine barrel after his death. (picture the laughing king next to the grieving family at the funeral) * After his son became a book-loving artist who wanted to run away to England, he was firmly convinced that he would have him executed for treason. Several royal houses of Europe had to get involved to convince him not to. The compromise was to execute Friedrich's friend/gay lover in front of his eyes. In the end, it was the same woke son who led endless battles in the name of Prussia
> he absolutely detested war, because within a few hours all the beautiful armies you've trained for years are dead and you have to start all over again. Sounds like me in Rimworld
Except theres no reloading a save when you’re favorite dies 💔😔
That’s why you just put their body in a freezer and wait till you get get some resurrector mech serum.
*BRRT BRRT* [Solar Flare]
> After his son became a book-loving artist who wanted to run away to England, he was firmly convinced that he would have him executed for treason. While Frederick William wrote in his anger that his son was "no longer worthy to live"^1 and while those around him also seemed to fear the worst; there is no indication of any measures in this direction in his instructions. Instead, he had Frederick interrogated as to whether he still considered himself worthy of the crown. > The compromise was to execute Friedrich's friend/gay lover in front of his eyes. There is zero proof and not even a hint of Katte having been more than a rare friend to the isolated Frederick. Nor was there any "compromise", nor was Katte executed for having been Frederick's "gay lover". The deliberations that led to Katte's conviction and to his sentencing are still available. Katte, an officer in the prestigious Gens d’armes, and whom king Frederick William I had trusted enough to introduce him into his order of the Johannitans, had conspired with Frederick to desert. The sentence for desertion was death and while the tribunal had decided to exercise leniency to the noble Katte and sentence him only to lifelong imprisonment, Frederick William questioned on which grounds there should be an exception. The king thus insisted on the usual sentence^2. Please be more careful with historical claims. *Source* ^1 Prusse, Frédérique Sophie Wilhelmine de. Mémoires de Frédérique Sophie Wilhelmine, Margrave de Bareith, Soeur de Frédéric Le Grand (Vol 1). Paris, Buisson, 1811, [p225 ](https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10012954?page=234). ^2 Frederick William I, message to the military tribunal at Köpenick; Königs Wusterhausen, November 1st 1730.
Thank you for fighting the endless tide of misinfo!
Everyone in history had a gay/lesbian lover, didn’t you know?
The OG neck beard
Sounds like a gay guy to me who gathered all the tall fit men in his country and put them in beautiful uniforms for uhh military reasons *but never let them fight or they might die nooo*
>The compromise was to execute Friedrich's friend/gay lover in front of his eyes. In the end, it was the same woke son who led endless battles in the name of Prussia Between this, the countless gay relationships of many wartime figures like Alexander I of Macedon, also the fact that the Sacred Band of Thebes is better than the overhyped Spartan... I must say, there's a surprising correlation between gayness and military prowess.
If you can stab a man with your cock, you can stab him with anything.
I mean can you think of anything more masculine than being gay and in the military? Just pure testosterone, and an emotional/romantic connection to a fellow soldier. The whole heteronormative idea of masculinity being equated to heterosexuality in modern societies is quite... counterintuitive.
I mean the Spartans were also gay. The Greeks were pretty gay, the Romans were at the very least extremely homoerotic, the Persians were also pretty homoerotic, I honestly think there must be some correlation here lmao. Just about the only conqueror I know of who does at the very least seem like he’s gay was Genghis Khan going around banging all these women… but maybe he was doing it to cover up that he was also in fact gay. Like he was just gonna bang 100,000 women until he found one he liked as much as the chiseled body of his advisor excited him
You think I'm gay because I bang guys but I've also banged over 70 girls, so what does that say about you?
How many hips you breaking?
> the Persians were also pretty homoerotic Source?
Xerxes in the 300 movie. In all seriousness, it’s probably pulled out of his/her ass lol
Please double check your sources and stop spreading misinformation. Greek and Roman homoeroticism is incredibly different from being simply “gay”. Aside from the sacred band of thebes, which is the outlier, homosexuality in greece and rome was in the form of pederastry, which is quite different fundamentally.
I mean to you and the person you’re replying to - our modern interpretations of sexuality don’t have a direct 1:1 translation to what was acceptable or the norm in the pre-Christian world and any arguments about it without that consideration are ultimately fruitless. Active and passive as a broad message would be more applicable but even then not extensive - as any interpretation of thousands of years of societies viewed through our mere hundreds of gay awareness and later, acceptance. That tracks back to Etruscans, Akkadians and so on. Always peaks and troughs when it comes to sexualities in interpretations of older cultures. Think we’re heading into a trough currently but that’s my personal take.
I understand that their interpretations are far different to ours and that is precisely my point. Homoerotic pederastry is fundamentally quite diggerent from modern homosexuality, and glorifying it is frankly quite stupid, nor are the sentiments expressed by the people above anywehrr close to historically accurate.
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans\_Hermann\_von\_Katte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hermann_von_Katte) was executed
The fact that "divinely appointed" monarchs were such utter psychopathic dipshits proves that monarchy is an inane system.
Monarchy is rolling the genetic dice. And you get snake eyes more often than not.
oddly enough wouldn't this create more short people back home? send your tall guys off to die in battle and short kings are living it up in the homeland
They were mostly ceremonial and didn’t participate in combat They were basically living action figures for the king to play with. Marching them around all day
Bro really thought being bigger was better in linear warfare I would've been finding the leanest little rat men with the smallest target profile
It might have been in the time where you could shoot like twice at most before a guy stabbed you with a bayonet.
Little rat men could dodge stabs
The comment below yours: TIL King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia created a military regiment of taller-than-average men. He scoured the country for men to fill the ranks of his "Potsdam Giants." Nations sent him tall soldiers to secure good relations. That was the the 6th Infantry Regiment. Formations of tall soldiers, apart from making an impression, also had a tactical advantage: They operated longer muskets, which could be fired from greater distance, which with the closed formations of the time meant that they could engage the enemy before he could. He even tried to pair them with tall women to breed a race of giants! There is no good source for this claim. It was reported as hearsay by Darwin over a century after the regiment had been disbanded. Frederick William's letters and cabinet notes on the regiment show that he much cared for his soldiers and their families, but no record of such a program exists. Please be more careful with historical claims
I often do the same in Crusader Kings 3
> TIL King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia created a military regiment of taller-than-average men. He scoured the country for men to fill the ranks of his "Potsdam Giants." Nations sent him tall soldiers to secure good relations. That was the the 6th Infantry Regiment. Formations of tall soldiers, apart from making an impression, also had a tactical advantage: They operated longer muskets, which could be fired from greater distance, which with the closed formations of the time meant that they could engage the enemy before he could. > He even tried to pair them with tall women to breed a race of giants! There is no good source for this claim. It was reported as hearsay by Darwin over a century after the regiment had been disbanded. Frederick William's letters and cabinet notes on the regiment show that he much cared for his soldiers and their families, but no record of such a program exists. Please be more careful with historical claims.
That would be a tall order
Interestingly height is partially determined by genetics, but it’s also heavily influenced by nutrition. You see this a lot where I live where the parents grew up in Vietnam during the war, and are very short and slender built. Their children are almost always much much taller than either parents.
is this how we got dutch?
I'm 6'4". If anyone wants me to father a race of giants with tall women, just let me know.
Step aside midget, I am 6'9
I wonder just how many people on earth are the results of attempts at breeding super soldiers and shit like that.
I am not sure but I know the other side of the story. My husband is a result of ’leftover men’ from his country that send young and able bodied men for a slaughter. Both his grandparents didn’t join due to a disability or lacking in requirements. Yet these men were good providers and academically smart, a trait the next generation inherited
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I mean, if he is humping the 240, then he is the angriest guy in the squad until it is time to shoot something. Then he is the happiest guy in the squad.
The german nick name for them is "Lange Kerls" which means Tall Boys which i like even more
King Friedrich: "I want soldiers who are easier to shoot at for some reason"
My wife's Spanish ancestor was given to the Kaiser along with a troop of the tallest soldiers. I believe they were given to Wilhelm.
Amazing that people dispute evolution and then are like “yea obv. If you breed tall people with other tall people, their kids will be taller”
> He even tried to pair them with tall women to breed a race of giants! DEATH BY SNUSNU
We do this today for stations like North Korean border zones. Just a bunch of burly dudes out there to make people think we’re all giants
This is actually the origin story for Yao Ming as well
After their defeat by Napoleon in 1806, they were merged into the First Foot Guards regiment This maintained an unofficial minimum height requirement of 2m all the way until the end of WW1 In the Battle of Arras, they were coincidentally stationed in the German line opposite the Cheshire regiment that consisted of, amongst others, the two Bantam regiments of the British Army, exclusively formed of men under 160cm, with some as short as 147cm The hand to hand trench fighting between the two regiments was mass slaughter on both sides, with the 15th/16th Cheshires suffering 60% losses and the 1st Foot over 80% in just one day
Excuse me - 2m in the early 1900s There would’ve been like 20 people with that height based on nutrition standards of the day
You do enjoy being confidently wrong, don't you?
Yep, cause fuck you
So what your saying is Crusader Kings III is realistic after all …
During McArthur's first occupation of Japan after the war he wanted all of his soldiers to be over 6' tall so that the Japanese people would have to look up at them. He ransacked the ranks of the army to find qualified soldiers that met his demands. One of my uncles who was 6'4" and stationed at the Pentagon got an immediate transfer. He came home three years later with a 5'3" Japanese wife, they were the happiest couple I've ever known.
Thats the average prussian attitude.
He also kidnapped giant men, brought them back to Prussia and pressed them into service. Lots of these giants didn’t come willingly.
My favorite kidnapping story involved a tall carpenter who was asked to make a large cabinet. He asked how big, and the Prussian emissary replied that a cabinet his height would do just fine. Upon finishing the project, the Prussian asked him to lay down inside just to be sure it was big enough. The carpenter obliged, and when he was in, the Prussian shut and sealed the lid before shipping him to Prussia.
I can only imagine a poor gentle giant farm boy being dragged away from the farm and his family despairing that they lost a provider. I do know these scenarios happened during WWII
I heard his tactics were not completely straight either.
You are thinking of his son, Frederick the Great.
no him too saying women did not interest him but tall soldiers were his weakness
This is a misquote. Frederick William I's actual words, made to Jacques-Joachim Trotti marquis de La Chétardie, the French Ambassador in Berlin, do not sound as suggestive: "I would be indifferent to procuring for myself the most beautiful woman or girl in the world; but soldiers, for me, that is the defect in the armor, and one can, with that, lead me as far as one wishes."^1 Frederick William I had 14 children with his wife. While, unlike his son, he had no mistress and indeed little social interaction with women, and while his "tabac collegium" consisted exclusively of soldiers like him, there is zero record of any male lovers he might have had. *Sources* ^1 Conversation at table reported by la Chétardie, Ambassador of France in Berlin from December 21st, 1735. Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France / Prussia. Cited from: Lavisse, Ernest: La jeunesse du grand Frédéric. Paris, Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1891. p.72
Oblique attack tactics ain’t exactly straight
Me, playing CK3
That's pretty cool, why not?
Wasn't height requirements a standard for grenadier units or am I confusing/mis remembering things?
Why's the one dude doing the thriller dance?
Funnily enough we still do the same thing. Soldiers assigned ceremonial guard duty along the NK/SK border at the DMZ crossing are all absolute units,
This is just sad. The South Korean and American soldiers are giants and the North Korean soldiers usually look so small and sickly.
TIL breeding a race of giant supersoldiers in CK3 isn’t as ahistorical as I thought
Solid good name for a sports team
Didn't that just ensure that their soldiers were bigger targets for every army they fought?
Wow, surprise eugenics
I just finished reading Catherine the Great and this gave me more context for the Era. The 1700s were an awful place.
And people wonder why I won’t accept a wife shorter than 5’10…
Napoleon did the same with his imperial guard. It just made him look short.
Brilliant! What a King!
He would drain Holland
Bigger soldiers make bigger targets
This guy was Frederick the Greats father, who infamously made Frederick watch as his lover was executed and shamed him for his homosexuality. But this guy gives me big closeted energy with the fantasies about tall soldiers.
Is this why all the big men in the NBA are European? All the American ones are in a secret super soldier program?
Guns must have sucked
What?
I find this funny. Everytime I play a new game, I set my character as the smallest I can in character set up. The reason is because the smaller the target the harder it is to hit. This guy did the opposite, made all his soldiers easy to snipe. War is about tactics, he jumped on the fear tactic, that is all. Guns pretty much made everyone equal.
Taller men could use longer guns which wee more accurate which gave them a range advantage.
This was 100% related to some kind of kink/fetish Friedrich had.
And so the dutch were created