September 8, 2026 • 34 mins
Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm was fascinated by all things military, but the crown jewel of his army was a group known as the Potsdam Giants -- men recruited on the basis of their height alone. If these tall boys, teens and men didn't want to sign up for the Giants, the King had no problem kidnapping them. Listen in to learn more about the strange story of the Potsdam Giants.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians, we are returning with a week of
classics because in honor of Labor Day, we decided to
kick back and take a little time off.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah. Without laboring.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Turns out Labor Day is not about laboring. It's about
not laboring and honoring them what labor. And all the,
you know, shout out to Max, the progress we've made.
give or take, as a country towards unionization and treating
people with respect when it comes to working and all that.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And so in honor of that celebration, as we said,
we're away for a week, but we didn't want to
leave you without some dope episodes to step to or
listen to. This story sticks with us. This comes to
us from 2019 when we explored the story of King
Frederick I, Wilhelm I, very into super soldiers.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Super tall soldiers, Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It was a bit of an odd flex. A bunch
of gangly dudes with a lot of reach. Kind of
like our buddy Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Tall?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I don't quite understand the strategy here.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, there were a lot of strange things about this
crew called the Potsdam Giants. Specifically the fact that If
you were a tall person and the king wanted you
in his army and you didn't want to sign up,
he would straight up kidnap you.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I mean, I guess it's sort of like Pete Hegsguth
saying no fatties in the army.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
This is no shorties, you know? And we can't wait
to hear your thoughts on this one. Noel, what say
we just roll the tape?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, Ben, I say huzzah.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. ¶ ¶ Welcome
(02:18):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians, and thank you for tuning in.
My name is Ben. I've got a question. Do you
guys remember the band They Might Be Giants?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Maybe. Certainly do, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I was doing a bit, because it's like, They Might
Be Giants, I might remember. They Might Be Giants. I'm Noel,
by the way. Who are you?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Oh, I'm Ben. I said that.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, I see. I can never remember if you said
it or not. That's super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Casey, you said you remember They Might Be Giants?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, I remember the Istanbul song. I remember Particle Man.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Birdhouse in Your Soul?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yep, yep. All the stuff that kind of made its
way into Animaniacs.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And Animaniacs had some great music going on in general, right?
That song where they name all the countries?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I was just thinking about that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's the one that's actually, since we're talking a bit
about nostalgia, that is the song that inspired me as
a child to learn one of my many useless skills,
which is naming all UN-recognized countries in the world. which
I can do and, you know, is completely useless. No
(03:22):
one cares.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Let's see if I can pull up a little lyric
sheet of the song and see if I can even
do it. So it's United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Republic, Dominica, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland,
El Salvador too. That's the song.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I just wanted to see if I could fit the
syllables in correctly. If you could do the K, I
absolutely could.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
You nailed it. So we're talking about They Might Be
Giants and a little bit of nostalgia, mainly because it's
such a, creative band name, right? But also because today's
episode is about people who actually were giants or they
were called giants. Specifically, they were called the Potsdam Giants.
(04:00):
So here's the shtick. Today's story takes place in Prussia.
Prussia at the time, and this is around the, this
is leading up to the early 18th century. So just
before then, Prussia at the time It was a military state,
but it was poor. It didn't have a huge population.
(04:24):
The land wasn't super fertile. They didn't have a ton
of resources, you know, like mines or natural fisheries. And
they didn't have many natural borders, like rivers or mountains
and so on. It kind of blended in to other
German states in the West and then sort of washed
into a gradient of Poland in the East. And this
(04:45):
meant that it was Pretty easy to invade.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Turns out, no connection to Russia whatsoever. Completely different etymology.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And now, I mean, you may be like, where's Prussia?
What's Prussia all about? Prussia no longer a thing. But
there is a city in Pennsylvania called King of Prussia,
and it's got a pretty nice outlet mall.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah. King of Prussia always baffled me as far as
names go. Actually, you know what, folks? While you're listening
to today's episode, just if it occurs to you Will
you please write to us and let us know your
favorite weird town names? There's Batman Australia. That's a real thing.
King of Prussia.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
That's one of the best ones we have here.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
For sure. Now you're putting me on the spot. I
definitely have one that's a go-to, but it's escaping right now.
See if I can come up with it by the
end of the episode. But today we are talking about obsession.
We are talking about... the need to separate yourself from
the herd, you know, like to kind of like rise
above the ranks, shall we say. And that is exactly
what King Frederick William I of Prussia tried to do
(05:46):
in what ended up being a pretty creepy, kidnappy kind
of weird way.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yes. So here's how we got here. So we said
when we're setting the stage leading up to the 18th century,
Since the 15th century or so, it was tough to
be in charge of this thing called Prussia. However, they
had a skilled family of rulers. Oh, it's my turn
(06:10):
for this one, huh? The Hohenzollerns. Sure.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
That sounds good.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
H-O-H-E-N-Z-O-L-L-E-R-N-S.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh, a second H, huh? Interesting. I defer to your knowledge.
I would have thought it would have been like an
E with an umlaut, but it's a Hohenzollers.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I think you did a better job.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
You know, I gave it my best.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, you know, you also used to live in Germany.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
As a small German child. It has since escaped me,
all of the culture and beautiful culture. tradition of the
German people.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You still have the German shining, I believe in you.
So these rulers held Brandenburg since the 15th century. And
over time, through their diplomacy and political maneuvering, they came
to possess other dominions, including the original region, which was
called Prussia in the east. And in the 17th century,
(07:01):
it was just another part of this thing called the
Holy Roman Empire. Great name. Very dramatic.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Crazy little thing called the Holy Roman Empire. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
And in 1660, a guy named Frederick William of the
House of... How do we say it, Noel?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Oh, gosh. Hohenzollern. Hohenzollern. Hohenzollern.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yes. This guy, Frederick William, he's the grandfather of the
main character of our story. He inherited all of the
house's possessions. And he said, look, we can't... rely on
this economy built on agriculture and natural resources because we
don't really have enough of that. We can't count on
(07:43):
natural borders like mountains to protect us.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Because we don't have those either.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
So he said we need to become a militaristic state.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Interesting. By the way, there's going to be a lot
of Fredericks going on here in this lineage, not the
most creative namers of humans.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
No Matt Fredericks, though.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Ah, that's a shame. We'll get him back eventually, though,
I promise. So, yeah, it's true. Frederick William. William? I'm
going to go with the American pronunciation so I don't
sound like a tool. Frederick William, yeah, of the house Hohenzollern.
He said he got all of this stuff and decided, okay,
he's going to start this obsession a generation before his
(08:24):
son William of becoming this kind of militaristic state. And
this really carries over. Okay, so let's go back to Grandfather.
who decides to assemble this army.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Prussia was able to advance its position by saying, hey,
we'll send these troops over for you to help you
with your combat or with your, you know, whatever you're
doing in the east or the west or so on.
And in return, give us some recognition. This comes to
a head when Frederick William's son, another guy named Frederick,
(08:58):
uses the military to as leverage against the emperor of
the Holy Roman Empire in 1701. The emperor says, hey, Prussia,
I need some extra firepower in the War of Spanish Succession.
And Frederick says, okay, yeah, we'll send you some of
our awesome troops if you recognize us as a kingdom.
(09:19):
And that's how he became King Frederick I of Prussia.
Fast forward, in 1713, Frederick I William, who is the
son of Frederick I, a lot of Freds, you're right,
ascends to the Prussian throne and pretty much immediately gets
weird with it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
He definitely does. And I want to point out one
funny little distinction that I've seen it printed a couple
of different ways. But the original Frederick, if I'm not mistaken,
and please, ridiculous historian community, take me to task on this.
The original title was King in Prussia, not King of Prussia.
And then it became replaced with the subsequent generation after
they got a little more leverage with King of Prussia.
(10:03):
So the original one was almost more like sort of
King in the North instead of King of the North.
You know, it's like you're a king, you're in your zone,
but you're not the king of it because the, you know,
there was the powers that be. we're still basically in charge.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Right. I see what you're saying. So you're kind of
the head assistant. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Still.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That's fascinating. I didn't think about that, but that's an
important distinction, man. Thank you for pointing that out.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Sure thing.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So Frederick William I, at this point, has spent his
entire life being told by everyone in a position of
power that the most important thing their kingdom has is
the military. As a result... Armies are even more important
to him than they have been to his father or
his grandfather. And he got, I said he got weird
(10:53):
with it, folks. It's not hyperbole. Casey, I asked if
you wanted to hear the spoilers about this off air
before we were recording. And Casey said, no, I want
to hear it in real time.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I'm a purist, you know. I want to hear it
like the folks out there in podcast land hear it.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Perfect. So here we go, Casey.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
This is for you.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
When we say that armies were important to Frederick William I,
we mean that he adored them on a personal level.
He was always hanging out with the boys. He was
popping open a cold one with the boys. He shrunk
his own household budget and sold most of the horses, jewels,
(11:36):
and furniture that belonged to his father such that he
cut his expenses by about three quarters and spent all
the money he had saved On armies instead.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I think the word we're looking for maybe is Spartan.
He existed in this very militaristic and no frills kind
of way because he wanted to be respected by his guys.
No real indication that he would fight alongside them or anything,
but he definitely wanted to at least adopt that lifestyle.
He was kind of known for being something of a quack,
(12:06):
a kook, an eccentric perhaps. And he was known– there's
a really great article on rapiddiffusion.com that goes through some
of history's most peculiar rulers. And I love that it
refers to Frederick and his tall blokes, which we're going
to get to in a minute. But according to this article,
he would roam the streets of Berlin in kind of
like a worn uniform. And he would actually just kind
(12:30):
of like walk up to anyone that he thought wasn't
acting right, whatever that means, and would– use this walking
stick he had to give them a good whacking.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
If he felt they were behaving inappropriately, right?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Seems like a really ill-tempered kind of not a very
friendly dude.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So can you imagine maybe you're out somewhere and you're
partying or you've had an argument, you know, you're somehow
at a state of enhanced emotions, right? And maybe you're
not behaving as normal. And then someone starts whacking the
tar out of you with a cane or a stick.
And you try to fight back and you realize, oh, wait,
never mind. That's the king.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
My bad.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
My bad, G. Or my bad, F. So he's a
complex character, right? He is attacking people in the streets.
He's not killing them for sport, but he is, as
you said, he's whacking them. He also doesn't think the
treasury should be a source of personal revenue. And that's
(13:34):
something a lot of politicians across the world could learn
from today. And he greatly emphasized the importance of the military.
Between his accession to the throne in 1713 and his
death in 1740, he expanded the size of the Prussian
army from 38,000 men to 83,000 men. And eventually, according
(13:57):
to a couple of different sources, one in every nine
men in Prussia was a soldier in and another 40,000
were foreign mercenaries. This is why he became known as
the Soldier King. And he went through these military projects
that paved the way for his son, who was also,
(14:19):
spoiler alert, named Frederick, Frederick the Great, to turn Prussia
into a great European power. But the thing he loved
the most out of all of his almost 100,000 soldiers,
out of all of his military trappings, was a personal
regiment that he designed that we know today as the
(14:41):
Potsdam Giants.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Also known as the Potsdamer Riesengard. Riesengard?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Or the Long Guys.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, or the Giant Guard of Potsdam. And this was
not a coincidence. This was that these men were so stately.
He recruited them And dare we say, went even further
than that eventually for this very effect. So he maintained
and had trained this unit of the tallest men around.
(15:11):
Some rumor that one, I think a Swedish recruit was
even like up to eight feet tall.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah. The only requirement for joining this regiment was that
you had to be over six feet tall. That doesn't sound.
especially difficult today. And these are modern ages because people
are tending to get taller. But back then that was
freakishly tall. You know what I mean? They were given
(15:37):
these great uniforms. They were given these weird caps that were,
I think, 18 inches high to make them look even taller.
And then they were given the best rooms and the
best food. And they also got paid, but they got
paid in a weird way. They didn't get paid by seniority.
They didn't get paid by experience.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
No, they got paid like literally for their height. And
let's not forget that this regiment never really saw a battle.
We'll get into more about how it became this kind
of like, you know, optical thing, this bargaining chip. But no,
their rate of pay was very specifically tied to their height.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So if you're 6'1, that guy next to you that's 6'3,
is making bank.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
You already know.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
You can tell. So despite all these privileges, a lot
of these giants, so-called giants, were very unhappy because they
were reluctant soldiers and their entire lives hinged on the
whims of Frederick William. It was like, for comparison, imagine
(16:41):
that you are the favorite entourage member of a Saudi
prince or something, someone who's literally beyond the law now.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And they say, like, whatever they think is a cool
idea at the time, you have to make it happen. And,
you know, let's say, for instance, Casey, let's say he's
in the entourage of a Saudi prince, and they want
you to just be on call 24-7 to show up
and just say things in French because they think French
(17:13):
sounds very pleasing to the ear. You would spend the
rest of your life never knowing when the phone was
going to ring, never really being able to be too
far away, and never knowing when this guy in charge
would say, you know, pronto, make with the French. That's
what they were doing. Show up and be tall. Whenever
the king wants.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
But I think it went even further than what we're
talking about. Right. I mean, he was so obsessed with
the recruiting the tallest of the tall that he like
there was word out that, OK, if you're a teacher
in Prussia, you're supposed to keep an eye out for
particularly tall children and then just, you know, give them up.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
To the regiment. Babies even were like marked with a
red scarf if they were pregnant. seen by the doctor
as being in a particularly high height and weight percentile
or whatever, you know, and that was the thing. People
sold their children. People sold their children. Frederick William made
it clear to his political allies that they could just
(18:14):
bestow upon him the gift of tall soldiers for his unit.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Bring me a tall child.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Rather than, like, you know, giving him gifts or lands
or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Right. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Absolutely. myopic about this whole thing um and.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
What hey no what happened if they didn't want to
go if these if these tall people.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I don't imagine anything good no was.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Did uh did he just say did frederick william just
say oh well you know i respect your autonomy in
your opinion no kings.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Don't do stuff like that do they no what did
they do um he yeah of course if he couldn't
legally acquire these uh these larger than average humans he
would just have them kidnapped in the night Which is crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
One time he tried to kidnap an Austrian diplomat, which
flies in the face of how diplomacy is supposed to work, right?
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I mean, this is really going into the territory of
like fetishism instead of actual kind of like functional tactics,
you know, because, again, did never see battle. It was
just like for the optics of having a bunch of
very tall, you know, super soldier looking men that were
at his beck and call.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
It's clearly, if not fetishization, it is an obsession. There's
no way around it. He even had people lured to
his kingdom under false pretenses, sort of the way that,
you know, that's an ongoing tragedy in the world today.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who
(19:42):
are trafficked to different countries because they're told they're going
to be, you know, domestic workers or they're going to
work in construction.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And the bait and switch happens. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And that's what Frederick William was doing. He had, for instance,
a guy named James Kirkland who was seven feet and
one inch tall, which is huge for this time.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's pretty tall now. And he was Irish and, He
was given a job as a footman from one Baron Bork,
who was the Prussian ambassador to London.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Ah, Baron Bork.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Good old Baron Bork. It sounds like that's the brand
name of some kind of canned meat product.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Baron Bork's Boston baked beans.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Bean bars.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Bean bars?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I don't know. I'm interested.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, and that job was, of course, a trap.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah. He was sent to this ship. That was moored
in Portsmouth, and then he was grabbed, tied up, and gagged,
and pretty much press ganged into the tall blokes.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Absolutely insane. You know, the long guys. But they were
given some special treatment. You know, they got to eat
really well. You know, in terms of, like, their position
within the military, they were treated with the utmost care
because they were, you know, William's special boys. His special
long boys.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Bring in my long boys.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
But just the— He seems like a real megalomaniacal creep.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
It seems very strange.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, not good.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It's like something the musician Prince would do. It does.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
It does seem like that. Only, I don't know, Prince,
probably Prince would ever take it this far. He might
just have like, you know, really tall llamas or something.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
He might have like one long llama.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Exactly, the long llama. But yeah, a lot of these
Potsdam Giants deserted, ran away, or tried to kill themselves.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, it seems like a joke now because so much
time has passed, but this is a really tough life.
They were more or less these oddities, this personal circus
for the king. This is a true story, folks. If
the king was sad, he would, and he's done this
more than once, he would assemble 200 to 300 of
(21:53):
his giants and have them march around for him. They
were preceded by tall people with turbans, playing cymbals and trumpets,
and an enormous bear that was the mascot of the Giants.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Oh, goody. Prance for me, my tall boys. Exactly. It
is I, Frederick Wilhelm I. You know, like, I'm sorry.
I just, the guy really sounds like a monster.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And this happened a lot when he was ill. I
can see the scene, right? When he was feeling poorly,
this mini parade would march through his bedroom. And he
would also paint pictures of his favorite giants from memory.
So it's exactly like you're describing. Well, I picture the
doctor saying, you know, your highness, you must have melancholic
(22:40):
humors or something. And he's saying, oh, silence the bear.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Here's the bear.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Watch the bear.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah. Oh, goodness.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
So this also goes into eugenics.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I was about to say, when are we going to
get it? When are we going to start dropping the
E word?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
This is the turn. Casey, can we get a things
take a dark turn sound?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, things that were already pretty dark take an even
darker turn.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, so Frederick William had the means and the motive
to create more tall people. So he began to experiment
with what we today call eugenics. He paired the tallest
of his soldiers with with the tallest women he could
(23:31):
find and ordered them to breed. This was somewhat effective.
As a result, the town was littered with unusually tall
men by the end of the 18th century. And that's
not all he did. He also tortured these people to
make them taller. Well, I mean, to make them taller,
eye roll city, right? I mean, you're either tall or
(23:52):
you ain't. If you're getting stretched on the rack, it's
just going to mess up your bones and make you
render you ineffective as a soldier entirely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
He would stretch these men on the rack in the
hopes of making them taller. It's just another, like, you know,
example of how people didn't understand how science worked back
in the day. Um, and yeah, they, they, of course
people were deserting and attempting suicide. You're not tall enough,
you know, or like maybe if I'm only a little taller,
he'll like me better and I'll get a little more money. Sure.
(24:22):
I'll submit myself to be stretched on the rack.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Or whatever. Exactly. And if anyone attempted to get out
of any of this stuff, we talked about how he would,
you know, stoop so low as to stage kidnappings. If
anyone who was in his company and in his regiment
refused any of this stuff, including the rack, they would
be killed.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
The punishment was death. There was no in-between. Probably one
of the only upsides of being a soldier in this
regiment was that you would never actually be in battle
because the king thought you were far too valuable to waste.
I can't send my tall boys out. Jeez.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
What a lunatic.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I know.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Real pill. So we don't know even today whether they
had any military value. If you think about it, at
the time, being that tall might have been a disadvantage
on the battlefield. You're more of a target to hit, right?
And Frederick also barely fought any wars during his lifetime
(25:31):
in comparison to other monarchs. By the time he died
in 1740, he was 51, he had had a total
of 2,500 tall blokes and his son, the one we
mentioned earlier, the one we call Frederick the Great.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
He thought these guys were useless. He probably felt a
little bad for him, too.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Well, Frederick the Great got the name of Frederick the
Great because he ended up being a much greater military
leader than his father. Yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
It's not ironic.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
No.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
It's not like Little Jot or something.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
No, and he basically, like, conquered a large swath of
the area, of the region.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, exactly. And because he saw this... tall blokes thing
as relatively useless he decided that these men were actually
soldiers and he would use them as actual soldiers so
he sent most of them to active combat units and
the pots and giants regiment itself wouldn't be fully dissolved
(26:32):
until 1806 but by this point the story was notorious
throughout europe everybody knew about this they also knew about
the breeding program And this leads us to, you know,
an even darker turn. We see the consequences of what
was an eccentric obsession, possibly a fetish. The Nazi government
(26:57):
in Germany, the Nazi regime, had its root. Their attempts
to create a so-called Aryan master race had their roots
in this Prussian militarism, along with, you know, their own
take on Darwinism.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Even though that was clearly... Frederick William I, that was
more responsible for that image, Frederick the Great, becoming a
much more successful military leader, kind of got stuck with
some of that too. Not saying he was a perfect
man or anything, but he has a really interesting backstory
because his father, remember the walking stick? He was a
(27:33):
notorious crank who would beat up his son with his
walking stick, and when he found out that his son
had a male lover— He had them both thrown in
jail and had the lover executed in front of his son,
Frederick the Great. So once his father died, I mean
he definitely had an ax to grind. And it seems
like he had like a fire in his belly that
(27:54):
kind of made him want to really like prove himself.
And I'm just speculating here a little bit. But he
definitely proved to be more effective than his father in
terms of conquering.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Right. So he ruled Frederick the Great. Frederick II ruled
the kingdom of Prussia from 1740, when his father passed away,
until 1786. So that's a reign of 46 years. That
makes him the longest reigning of any Hohenzollern king. He
reorganized the Prussian armies. He was a patron of the
(28:24):
arts and the enlightenment. He really earned his name with
his success in the Seven Years' War. He was the
last monarch titled King in Prussia, and he declared himself
King of Prussia. Boom. So he's the reason the name changed.
He's leading military power, and he was nicknamed Der alte Fritz,
(28:46):
or the old Fritz by the Prussian people and eventually
the rest of Germany. So he did a lot of
stuff that his forefathers were unable to do in terms
of political and military organization.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So despite his successes— And he was definitely an imperfect
person as well. Frederick the Great was unfairly associated with
the Potsdam Giants. You know, they mixed up their Fredericks, right?
Charles Darwin even refers to the Potsdam Giants, by the way.
He says, unlike livestock, human beings have never been forcibly
(29:20):
bred for select characteristics, quote, except in the well-known case
of the Prussian Grenadiers, the Potsdam Giants. Wow. Where are
we at now? What is the legacy of these Potsdam Giants?
Maybe you're listening to this and you're not completely on
the same page as us. Maybe you think, I don't know, guys,
(29:43):
this sounds pretty cool. I'd like to see that march.
I love bears and cymbals and trumpets.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Fun! Well, lucky for you, if you go to langa-caris.de,
you can hire Potsdam Giant reenactors to march around your
very bedroom. Not sure if that includes a bear, but
this is an association in Potsdam, Germany, that tries to
kind of carry on the legacy of the tall boys.
(30:10):
And you can get them to perform this authentic military
drill at your family picnic.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I don't think they have a bear, though. That's one note,
one difference.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Would this have been a dancing bear? Like, I'm picturing
it balancing on a ball, circus style, or would it
have just been like a big, lumbering, scary bear?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
It was probably trained to do some things. Without going
too far down the rabbit hole, I would not be
surprised if Frederick William maybe had the bear trained to
do like rough reenactments of military drills, you know, give
it a stick it plays with or something.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
So this concludes our story. Casey, we have to ask.
Was this, was this worth learning organically? We didn't string
you along. Do you feel like you got your time's worth?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I absolutely got way more than I bargained for.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
So yeah. Uh, good job. So say we all Casey
on the case.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Casey on the case. And thank you so much for
tuning in. We want to hear, remember, we want to
hear the weird town names in your neck of the
global woods. And, uh, Where do we go with this?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
I will tell you one thing. When I was originally
starting to research this, I just Googled super soldiers or
Frederick super soldiers and like that. And a bunch of
YouTube videos came up about this notion of are there
super soldier Nephilim like angels in the United States military?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah. I'm familiar with that idea as well. It's a
little bit out there.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Oh, it was way out there.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
But you know what? Let us know if you are
listening to this episode and you are a Nephilim super soldier,
either in the U.S. or abroad. We would love to
hear your story. Tell us about the great battle for
good and evil.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
You can write to us at ridiculous at iheartradio.com. You
can hit us up on our Facebook group. That is
the Ridiculous Historians. All you have to do is come
up with either my name or Ben's name. I really
don't understand why people bother writing, I don't know, when
they put their responses. I mean, look it up. If
you really want to be a member of the group,
you could clearly look up mine or Ben's name. It
flabbergasted me a little bit. Or, you know, do a
(32:16):
clever diversion that like is a reference to the show
or just make us laugh.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, just make me laugh.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Not an exclusive group.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Also, you know what? I love when people are sending
out T-shirt ideas. I'm going to say it. I'm interested
in seeing a design for Baron Bork's Boston Baked Bean bars.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
I also really want to do some straight seahorse teeth
shirts because I am surprised and amazed and honestly touched.
That phrase has taken off the way it has. I
told you.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I told you on air. Sometimes you just know when
the idea is happening. It's true.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
If you want to check me and Ben out in
our personal private time lives, you can hit me up
on Instagram at HowNowNoelBrown.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
You can see me get kicked into and out of
various airports around the world at Ben Bullen. You can
also always, as I said, write to us with some
T-shirt ideas and hate. Let us know if you would
join the Potsdam Giants. If, you know, it sounds like
it's not a bad gig for someone who consented to
(33:17):
be in it. Sure, sure. Let us know. Thank you
so much to Christopher Haciotis, friend of the show. Of course,
thank you to Casey Labouche-Pagram for returning from abroad.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Thanks to our research associate, Gabe Lussier. Thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. And as always, thanks to you, Ben,
for Being such a dapper pal and co-host on this
here show.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Likewise, Noel.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Likewise.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Hey, Casey, can we get like a little military music
to play us out? Everyone pretend to be seven feet tall.
Feels so good.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
See you, folks. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians, we are returning with a week of
classics because in honor of Labor Day, we decided to
kick back and take a little time off.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah. Without laboring.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Turns out Labor Day is not about laboring. It's about
not laboring and honoring them what labor. And all the,
you know, shout out to Max, the progress we've made.
give or take, as a country towards unionization and treating
people with respect when it comes to working and all that.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
And so in honor of that celebration, as we said,
we're away for a week, but we didn't want to
leave you without some dope episodes to step to or
listen to. This story sticks with us. This comes to
us from 2019 when we explored the story of King
Frederick I, Wilhelm I, very into super soldiers.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Super tall soldiers, Ben.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It was a bit of an odd flex. A bunch
of gangly dudes with a lot of reach. Kind of
like our buddy Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Tall?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I don't quite understand the strategy here.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, there were a lot of strange things about this
crew called the Potsdam Giants. Specifically the fact that If
you were a tall person and the king wanted you
in his army and you didn't want to sign up,
he would straight up kidnap you.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I mean, I guess it's sort of like Pete Hegsguth
saying no fatties in the army.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
This is no shorties, you know? And we can't wait
to hear your thoughts on this one. Noel, what say
we just roll the tape?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, Ben, I say huzzah.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. ¶ ¶ Welcome
(02:18):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians, and thank you for tuning in.
My name is Ben. I've got a question. Do you
guys remember the band They Might Be Giants?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Maybe. Certainly do, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I was doing a bit, because it's like, They Might
Be Giants, I might remember. They Might Be Giants. I'm Noel,
by the way. Who are you?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Oh, I'm Ben. I said that.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, I see. I can never remember if you said
it or not. That's super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Casey, you said you remember They Might Be Giants?
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, I remember the Istanbul song. I remember Particle Man.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Birdhouse in Your Soul?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Yep, yep. All the stuff that kind of made its
way into Animaniacs.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
And Animaniacs had some great music going on in general, right?
That song where they name all the countries?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I was just thinking about that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
That's the one that's actually, since we're talking a bit
about nostalgia, that is the song that inspired me as
a child to learn one of my many useless skills,
which is naming all UN-recognized countries in the world. which
I can do and, you know, is completely useless. No
(03:22):
one cares.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Let's see if I can pull up a little lyric
sheet of the song and see if I can even
do it. So it's United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, Republic, Dominica, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland,
El Salvador too. That's the song.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I just wanted to see if I could fit the
syllables in correctly. If you could do the K, I
absolutely could.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
You nailed it. So we're talking about They Might Be
Giants and a little bit of nostalgia, mainly because it's
such a, creative band name, right? But also because today's
episode is about people who actually were giants or they
were called giants. Specifically, they were called the Potsdam Giants.
(04:00):
So here's the shtick. Today's story takes place in Prussia.
Prussia at the time, and this is around the, this
is leading up to the early 18th century. So just
before then, Prussia at the time It was a military state,
but it was poor. It didn't have a huge population.
(04:24):
The land wasn't super fertile. They didn't have a ton
of resources, you know, like mines or natural fisheries. And
they didn't have many natural borders, like rivers or mountains
and so on. It kind of blended in to other
German states in the West and then sort of washed
into a gradient of Poland in the East. And this
(04:45):
meant that it was Pretty easy to invade.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Turns out, no connection to Russia whatsoever. Completely different etymology.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And now, I mean, you may be like, where's Prussia?
What's Prussia all about? Prussia no longer a thing. But
there is a city in Pennsylvania called King of Prussia,
and it's got a pretty nice outlet mall.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah. King of Prussia always baffled me as far as
names go. Actually, you know what, folks? While you're listening
to today's episode, just if it occurs to you Will
you please write to us and let us know your
favorite weird town names? There's Batman Australia. That's a real thing.
King of Prussia.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
That's one of the best ones we have here.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
For sure. Now you're putting me on the spot. I
definitely have one that's a go-to, but it's escaping right now.
See if I can come up with it by the
end of the episode. But today we are talking about obsession.
We are talking about... the need to separate yourself from
the herd, you know, like to kind of like rise
above the ranks, shall we say. And that is exactly
what King Frederick William I of Prussia tried to do
(05:46):
in what ended up being a pretty creepy, kidnappy kind
of weird way.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yes. So here's how we got here. So we said
when we're setting the stage leading up to the 18th century,
Since the 15th century or so, it was tough to
be in charge of this thing called Prussia. However, they
had a skilled family of rulers. Oh, it's my turn
(06:10):
for this one, huh? The Hohenzollerns. Sure.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
That sounds good.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
H-O-H-E-N-Z-O-L-L-E-R-N-S.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh, a second H, huh? Interesting. I defer to your knowledge.
I would have thought it would have been like an
E with an umlaut, but it's a Hohenzollers.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I think you did a better job.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
You know, I gave it my best.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well, you know, you also used to live in Germany.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
As a small German child. It has since escaped me,
all of the culture and beautiful culture. tradition of the
German people.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
You still have the German shining, I believe in you.
So these rulers held Brandenburg since the 15th century. And
over time, through their diplomacy and political maneuvering, they came
to possess other dominions, including the original region, which was
called Prussia in the east. And in the 17th century,
(07:01):
it was just another part of this thing called the
Holy Roman Empire. Great name. Very dramatic.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Crazy little thing called the Holy Roman Empire. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
And in 1660, a guy named Frederick William of the
House of... How do we say it, Noel?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Oh, gosh. Hohenzollern. Hohenzollern. Hohenzollern.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yes. This guy, Frederick William, he's the grandfather of the
main character of our story. He inherited all of the
house's possessions. And he said, look, we can't... rely on
this economy built on agriculture and natural resources because we
don't really have enough of that. We can't count on
(07:43):
natural borders like mountains to protect us.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Because we don't have those either.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
So he said we need to become a militaristic state.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Interesting. By the way, there's going to be a lot
of Fredericks going on here in this lineage, not the
most creative namers of humans.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
No Matt Fredericks, though.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Ah, that's a shame. We'll get him back eventually, though,
I promise. So, yeah, it's true. Frederick William. William? I'm
going to go with the American pronunciation so I don't
sound like a tool. Frederick William, yeah, of the house Hohenzollern.
He said he got all of this stuff and decided, okay,
he's going to start this obsession a generation before his
(08:24):
son William of becoming this kind of militaristic state. And
this really carries over. Okay, so let's go back to Grandfather.
who decides to assemble this army.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Prussia was able to advance its position by saying, hey,
we'll send these troops over for you to help you
with your combat or with your, you know, whatever you're
doing in the east or the west or so on.
And in return, give us some recognition. This comes to
a head when Frederick William's son, another guy named Frederick,
(08:58):
uses the military to as leverage against the emperor of
the Holy Roman Empire in 1701. The emperor says, hey, Prussia,
I need some extra firepower in the War of Spanish Succession.
And Frederick says, okay, yeah, we'll send you some of
our awesome troops if you recognize us as a kingdom.
(09:19):
And that's how he became King Frederick I of Prussia.
Fast forward, in 1713, Frederick I William, who is the
son of Frederick I, a lot of Freds, you're right,
ascends to the Prussian throne and pretty much immediately gets
weird with it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
He definitely does. And I want to point out one
funny little distinction that I've seen it printed a couple
of different ways. But the original Frederick, if I'm not mistaken,
and please, ridiculous historian community, take me to task on this.
The original title was King in Prussia, not King of Prussia.
And then it became replaced with the subsequent generation after
they got a little more leverage with King of Prussia.
(10:03):
So the original one was almost more like sort of
King in the North instead of King of the North.
You know, it's like you're a king, you're in your zone,
but you're not the king of it because the, you know,
there was the powers that be. we're still basically in charge.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Right. I see what you're saying. So you're kind of
the head assistant. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Still.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That's fascinating. I didn't think about that, but that's an
important distinction, man. Thank you for pointing that out.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Sure thing.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So Frederick William I, at this point, has spent his
entire life being told by everyone in a position of
power that the most important thing their kingdom has is
the military. As a result... Armies are even more important
to him than they have been to his father or
his grandfather. And he got, I said he got weird
(10:53):
with it, folks. It's not hyperbole. Casey, I asked if
you wanted to hear the spoilers about this off air
before we were recording. And Casey said, no, I want
to hear it in real time.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I'm a purist, you know. I want to hear it
like the folks out there in podcast land hear it.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Perfect. So here we go, Casey.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
This is for you.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
When we say that armies were important to Frederick William I,
we mean that he adored them on a personal level.
He was always hanging out with the boys. He was
popping open a cold one with the boys. He shrunk
his own household budget and sold most of the horses, jewels,
(11:36):
and furniture that belonged to his father such that he
cut his expenses by about three quarters and spent all
the money he had saved On armies instead.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I think the word we're looking for maybe is Spartan.
He existed in this very militaristic and no frills kind
of way because he wanted to be respected by his guys.
No real indication that he would fight alongside them or anything,
but he definitely wanted to at least adopt that lifestyle.
He was kind of known for being something of a quack,
(12:06):
a kook, an eccentric perhaps. And he was known– there's
a really great article on rapiddiffusion.com that goes through some
of history's most peculiar rulers. And I love that it
refers to Frederick and his tall blokes, which we're going
to get to in a minute. But according to this article,
he would roam the streets of Berlin in kind of
like a worn uniform. And he would actually just kind
(12:30):
of like walk up to anyone that he thought wasn't
acting right, whatever that means, and would– use this walking
stick he had to give them a good whacking.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
If he felt they were behaving inappropriately, right?
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Seems like a really ill-tempered kind of not a very
friendly dude.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
So can you imagine maybe you're out somewhere and you're
partying or you've had an argument, you know, you're somehow
at a state of enhanced emotions, right? And maybe you're
not behaving as normal. And then someone starts whacking the
tar out of you with a cane or a stick.
And you try to fight back and you realize, oh, wait,
never mind. That's the king.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
My bad.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
My bad, G. Or my bad, F. So he's a
complex character, right? He is attacking people in the streets.
He's not killing them for sport, but he is, as
you said, he's whacking them. He also doesn't think the
treasury should be a source of personal revenue. And that's
(13:34):
something a lot of politicians across the world could learn
from today. And he greatly emphasized the importance of the military.
Between his accession to the throne in 1713 and his
death in 1740, he expanded the size of the Prussian
army from 38,000 men to 83,000 men. And eventually, according
(13:57):
to a couple of different sources, one in every nine
men in Prussia was a soldier in and another 40,000
were foreign mercenaries. This is why he became known as
the Soldier King. And he went through these military projects
that paved the way for his son, who was also,
(14:19):
spoiler alert, named Frederick, Frederick the Great, to turn Prussia
into a great European power. But the thing he loved
the most out of all of his almost 100,000 soldiers,
out of all of his military trappings, was a personal
regiment that he designed that we know today as the
(14:41):
Potsdam Giants.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Also known as the Potsdamer Riesengard. Riesengard?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Or the Long Guys.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, or the Giant Guard of Potsdam. And this was
not a coincidence. This was that these men were so stately.
He recruited them And dare we say, went even further
than that eventually for this very effect. So he maintained
and had trained this unit of the tallest men around.
(15:11):
Some rumor that one, I think a Swedish recruit was
even like up to eight feet tall.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah. The only requirement for joining this regiment was that
you had to be over six feet tall. That doesn't sound.
especially difficult today. And these are modern ages because people
are tending to get taller. But back then that was
freakishly tall. You know what I mean? They were given
(15:37):
these great uniforms. They were given these weird caps that were,
I think, 18 inches high to make them look even taller.
And then they were given the best rooms and the
best food. And they also got paid, but they got
paid in a weird way. They didn't get paid by seniority.
They didn't get paid by experience.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
No, they got paid like literally for their height. And
let's not forget that this regiment never really saw a battle.
We'll get into more about how it became this kind
of like, you know, optical thing, this bargaining chip. But no,
their rate of pay was very specifically tied to their height.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So if you're 6'1, that guy next to you that's 6'3,
is making bank.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
You already know.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
You can tell. So despite all these privileges, a lot
of these giants, so-called giants, were very unhappy because they
were reluctant soldiers and their entire lives hinged on the
whims of Frederick William. It was like, for comparison, imagine
(16:41):
that you are the favorite entourage member of a Saudi
prince or something, someone who's literally beyond the law now.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And they say, like, whatever they think is a cool
idea at the time, you have to make it happen. And,
you know, let's say, for instance, Casey, let's say he's
in the entourage of a Saudi prince, and they want
you to just be on call 24-7 to show up
and just say things in French because they think French
(17:13):
sounds very pleasing to the ear. You would spend the
rest of your life never knowing when the phone was
going to ring, never really being able to be too
far away, and never knowing when this guy in charge
would say, you know, pronto, make with the French. That's
what they were doing. Show up and be tall. Whenever
the king wants.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
But I think it went even further than what we're
talking about. Right. I mean, he was so obsessed with
the recruiting the tallest of the tall that he like
there was word out that, OK, if you're a teacher
in Prussia, you're supposed to keep an eye out for
particularly tall children and then just, you know, give them up.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
To the regiment. Babies even were like marked with a
red scarf if they were pregnant. seen by the doctor
as being in a particularly high height and weight percentile
or whatever, you know, and that was the thing. People
sold their children. People sold their children. Frederick William made
it clear to his political allies that they could just
(18:14):
bestow upon him the gift of tall soldiers for his unit.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Bring me a tall child.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Rather than, like, you know, giving him gifts or lands
or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Right. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Absolutely. myopic about this whole thing um and.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
What hey no what happened if they didn't want to
go if these if these tall people.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I don't imagine anything good no was.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Did uh did he just say did frederick william just
say oh well you know i respect your autonomy in
your opinion no kings.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Don't do stuff like that do they no what did
they do um he yeah of course if he couldn't
legally acquire these uh these larger than average humans he
would just have them kidnapped in the night Which is crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
One time he tried to kidnap an Austrian diplomat, which
flies in the face of how diplomacy is supposed to work, right?
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I mean, this is really going into the territory of
like fetishism instead of actual kind of like functional tactics,
you know, because, again, did never see battle. It was
just like for the optics of having a bunch of
very tall, you know, super soldier looking men that were
at his beck and call.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
It's clearly, if not fetishization, it is an obsession. There's
no way around it. He even had people lured to
his kingdom under false pretenses, sort of the way that,
you know, that's an ongoing tragedy in the world today.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who
(19:42):
are trafficked to different countries because they're told they're going
to be, you know, domestic workers or they're going to
work in construction.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And the bait and switch happens. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And that's what Frederick William was doing. He had, for instance,
a guy named James Kirkland who was seven feet and
one inch tall, which is huge for this time.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's pretty tall now. And he was Irish and, He
was given a job as a footman from one Baron Bork,
who was the Prussian ambassador to London.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Ah, Baron Bork.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Good old Baron Bork. It sounds like that's the brand
name of some kind of canned meat product.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Baron Bork's Boston baked beans.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Bean bars.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Bean bars?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I don't know. I'm interested.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, and that job was, of course, a trap.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah. He was sent to this ship. That was moored
in Portsmouth, and then he was grabbed, tied up, and gagged,
and pretty much press ganged into the tall blokes.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Absolutely insane. You know, the long guys. But they were
given some special treatment. You know, they got to eat
really well. You know, in terms of, like, their position
within the military, they were treated with the utmost care
because they were, you know, William's special boys. His special
long boys.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Bring in my long boys.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
But just the— He seems like a real megalomaniacal creep.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
It seems very strange.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, not good.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
It's like something the musician Prince would do. It does.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
It does seem like that. Only, I don't know, Prince,
probably Prince would ever take it this far. He might
just have like, you know, really tall llamas or something.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
He might have like one long llama.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Exactly, the long llama. But yeah, a lot of these
Potsdam Giants deserted, ran away, or tried to kill themselves.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, it seems like a joke now because so much
time has passed, but this is a really tough life.
They were more or less these oddities, this personal circus
for the king. This is a true story, folks. If
the king was sad, he would, and he's done this
more than once, he would assemble 200 to 300 of
(21:53):
his giants and have them march around for him. They
were preceded by tall people with turbans, playing cymbals and trumpets,
and an enormous bear that was the mascot of the Giants.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Oh, goody. Prance for me, my tall boys. Exactly. It
is I, Frederick Wilhelm I. You know, like, I'm sorry.
I just, the guy really sounds like a monster.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And this happened a lot when he was ill. I
can see the scene, right? When he was feeling poorly,
this mini parade would march through his bedroom. And he
would also paint pictures of his favorite giants from memory.
So it's exactly like you're describing. Well, I picture the
doctor saying, you know, your highness, you must have melancholic
(22:40):
humors or something. And he's saying, oh, silence the bear.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Here's the bear.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Watch the bear.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah. Oh, goodness.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
So this also goes into eugenics.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I was about to say, when are we going to
get it? When are we going to start dropping the
E word?
Speaker 1 (22:58):
This is the turn. Casey, can we get a things
take a dark turn sound?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, things that were already pretty dark take an even
darker turn.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, so Frederick William had the means and the motive
to create more tall people. So he began to experiment
with what we today call eugenics. He paired the tallest
of his soldiers with with the tallest women he could
(23:31):
find and ordered them to breed. This was somewhat effective.
As a result, the town was littered with unusually tall
men by the end of the 18th century. And that's
not all he did. He also tortured these people to
make them taller. Well, I mean, to make them taller,
eye roll city, right? I mean, you're either tall or
(23:52):
you ain't. If you're getting stretched on the rack, it's
just going to mess up your bones and make you
render you ineffective as a soldier entirely. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
He would stretch these men on the rack in the
hopes of making them taller. It's just another, like, you know,
example of how people didn't understand how science worked back
in the day. Um, and yeah, they, they, of course
people were deserting and attempting suicide. You're not tall enough,
you know, or like maybe if I'm only a little taller,
he'll like me better and I'll get a little more money. Sure.
(24:22):
I'll submit myself to be stretched on the rack.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Or whatever. Exactly. And if anyone attempted to get out
of any of this stuff, we talked about how he would,
you know, stoop so low as to stage kidnappings. If
anyone who was in his company and in his regiment
refused any of this stuff, including the rack, they would
be killed.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
The punishment was death. There was no in-between. Probably one
of the only upsides of being a soldier in this
regiment was that you would never actually be in battle
because the king thought you were far too valuable to waste.
I can't send my tall boys out. Jeez.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
What a lunatic.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I know.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Real pill. So we don't know even today whether they
had any military value. If you think about it, at
the time, being that tall might have been a disadvantage
on the battlefield. You're more of a target to hit, right?
And Frederick also barely fought any wars during his lifetime
(25:31):
in comparison to other monarchs. By the time he died
in 1740, he was 51, he had had a total
of 2,500 tall blokes and his son, the one we
mentioned earlier, the one we call Frederick the Great.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
He thought these guys were useless. He probably felt a
little bad for him, too.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Well, Frederick the Great got the name of Frederick the
Great because he ended up being a much greater military
leader than his father. Yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
It's not ironic.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
No.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
It's not like Little Jot or something.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
No, and he basically, like, conquered a large swath of
the area, of the region.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, exactly. And because he saw this... tall blokes thing
as relatively useless he decided that these men were actually
soldiers and he would use them as actual soldiers so
he sent most of them to active combat units and
the pots and giants regiment itself wouldn't be fully dissolved
(26:32):
until 1806 but by this point the story was notorious
throughout europe everybody knew about this they also knew about
the breeding program And this leads us to, you know,
an even darker turn. We see the consequences of what
was an eccentric obsession, possibly a fetish. The Nazi government
(26:57):
in Germany, the Nazi regime, had its root. Their attempts
to create a so-called Aryan master race had their roots
in this Prussian militarism, along with, you know, their own
take on Darwinism.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Even though that was clearly... Frederick William I, that was
more responsible for that image, Frederick the Great, becoming a
much more successful military leader, kind of got stuck with
some of that too. Not saying he was a perfect
man or anything, but he has a really interesting backstory
because his father, remember the walking stick? He was a
(27:33):
notorious crank who would beat up his son with his
walking stick, and when he found out that his son
had a male lover— He had them both thrown in
jail and had the lover executed in front of his son,
Frederick the Great. So once his father died, I mean
he definitely had an ax to grind. And it seems
like he had like a fire in his belly that
(27:54):
kind of made him want to really like prove himself.
And I'm just speculating here a little bit. But he
definitely proved to be more effective than his father in
terms of conquering.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Right. So he ruled Frederick the Great. Frederick II ruled
the kingdom of Prussia from 1740, when his father passed away,
until 1786. So that's a reign of 46 years. That
makes him the longest reigning of any Hohenzollern king. He
reorganized the Prussian armies. He was a patron of the
(28:24):
arts and the enlightenment. He really earned his name with
his success in the Seven Years' War. He was the
last monarch titled King in Prussia, and he declared himself
King of Prussia. Boom. So he's the reason the name changed.
He's leading military power, and he was nicknamed Der alte Fritz,
(28:46):
or the old Fritz by the Prussian people and eventually
the rest of Germany. So he did a lot of
stuff that his forefathers were unable to do in terms
of political and military organization.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So despite his successes— And he was definitely an imperfect
person as well. Frederick the Great was unfairly associated with
the Potsdam Giants. You know, they mixed up their Fredericks, right?
Charles Darwin even refers to the Potsdam Giants, by the way.
He says, unlike livestock, human beings have never been forcibly
(29:20):
bred for select characteristics, quote, except in the well-known case
of the Prussian Grenadiers, the Potsdam Giants. Wow. Where are
we at now? What is the legacy of these Potsdam Giants?
Maybe you're listening to this and you're not completely on
the same page as us. Maybe you think, I don't know, guys,
(29:43):
this sounds pretty cool. I'd like to see that march.
I love bears and cymbals and trumpets.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Fun! Well, lucky for you, if you go to langa-caris.de,
you can hire Potsdam Giant reenactors to march around your
very bedroom. Not sure if that includes a bear, but
this is an association in Potsdam, Germany, that tries to
kind of carry on the legacy of the tall boys.
(30:10):
And you can get them to perform this authentic military
drill at your family picnic.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I don't think they have a bear, though. That's one note,
one difference.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Would this have been a dancing bear? Like, I'm picturing
it balancing on a ball, circus style, or would it
have just been like a big, lumbering, scary bear?
Speaker 1 (30:26):
It was probably trained to do some things. Without going
too far down the rabbit hole, I would not be
surprised if Frederick William maybe had the bear trained to
do like rough reenactments of military drills, you know, give
it a stick it plays with or something.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
So this concludes our story. Casey, we have to ask.
Was this, was this worth learning organically? We didn't string
you along. Do you feel like you got your time's worth?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
I absolutely got way more than I bargained for.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
So yeah. Uh, good job. So say we all Casey
on the case.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Casey on the case. And thank you so much for
tuning in. We want to hear, remember, we want to
hear the weird town names in your neck of the
global woods. And, uh, Where do we go with this?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
I will tell you one thing. When I was originally
starting to research this, I just Googled super soldiers or
Frederick super soldiers and like that. And a bunch of
YouTube videos came up about this notion of are there
super soldier Nephilim like angels in the United States military?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah. I'm familiar with that idea as well. It's a
little bit out there.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Oh, it was way out there.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
But you know what? Let us know if you are
listening to this episode and you are a Nephilim super soldier,
either in the U.S. or abroad. We would love to
hear your story. Tell us about the great battle for
good and evil.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
You can write to us at ridiculous at iheartradio.com. You
can hit us up on our Facebook group. That is
the Ridiculous Historians. All you have to do is come
up with either my name or Ben's name. I really
don't understand why people bother writing, I don't know, when
they put their responses. I mean, look it up. If
you really want to be a member of the group,
you could clearly look up mine or Ben's name. It
flabbergasted me a little bit. Or, you know, do a
(32:16):
clever diversion that like is a reference to the show
or just make us laugh.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, just make me laugh.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Not an exclusive group.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Also, you know what? I love when people are sending
out T-shirt ideas. I'm going to say it. I'm interested
in seeing a design for Baron Bork's Boston Baked Bean bars.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
I also really want to do some straight seahorse teeth
shirts because I am surprised and amazed and honestly touched.
That phrase has taken off the way it has. I
told you.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I told you on air. Sometimes you just know when
the idea is happening. It's true.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
If you want to check me and Ben out in
our personal private time lives, you can hit me up
on Instagram at HowNowNoelBrown.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
You can see me get kicked into and out of
various airports around the world at Ben Bullen. You can
also always, as I said, write to us with some
T-shirt ideas and hate. Let us know if you would
join the Potsdam Giants. If, you know, it sounds like
it's not a bad gig for someone who consented to
(33:17):
be in it. Sure, sure. Let us know. Thank you
so much to Christopher Haciotis, friend of the show. Of course,
thank you to Casey Labouche-Pagram for returning from abroad.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Thanks to our research associate, Gabe Lussier. Thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. And as always, thanks to you, Ben,
for Being such a dapper pal and co-host on this
here show.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Likewise, Noel.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Likewise.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Hey, Casey, can we get like a little military music
to play us out? Everyone pretend to be seven feet tall.
Feels so good.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
See you, folks. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.