The Napoleon complex is named after Emperor Napoleon I of France. The conventional wisdom is that Napoleon compensated for his lack of height by seeking power, war and conquest. However, Napoleon was actually above average height for his time period; the average 18th century Frenchman stood at 5 ft 3 in (1.6 m).[3] Historians have now suggested Napoleon was 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) tall. Napoleon was often seen with his Imperial Guard, which contributed to the perception of his being short because the Imperial Guards were above average height.
More detail, including confusion possibly caused by English and French inches being different sizes.
Interesting. The man most famous for being a short leader may not have been as short as he’s rumoured to have been.
Despite the fact that I seem to have picked a bad example, there are still a number of short leaders in history; height is a factor, and perhaps an important one, but hardly the only one. There’s a list of a few short Russian leaders over here—and, incidentally, if one puts “Lenin height” into Google, Google will actually display Lenin’s height above the search results. (Google’s heights indicate that the heights on the Yahoo question seem to be a few centimetres short—Lenin was 165cm according to Google, Stalin was 173cm, Putin was 165cm. No result shown for Kruschev.) Average male height in Russia, around 2006-2008, seems to be 176.2cm.
And all of them are tall compared to Benito Juárez, the shortest world leader ever at 137cm, or 4ft 6in.
Napoleon wasn’t short
More detail, including confusion possibly caused by English and French inches being different sizes.
Interesting. The man most famous for being a short leader may not have been as short as he’s rumoured to have been.
Despite the fact that I seem to have picked a bad example, there are still a number of short leaders in history; height is a factor, and perhaps an important one, but hardly the only one. There’s a list of a few short Russian leaders over here—and, incidentally, if one puts “Lenin height” into Google, Google will actually display Lenin’s height above the search results. (Google’s heights indicate that the heights on the Yahoo question seem to be a few centimetres short—Lenin was 165cm according to Google, Stalin was 173cm, Putin was 165cm. No result shown for Kruschev.) Average male height in Russia, around 2006-2008, seems to be 176.2cm.
And all of them are tall compared to Benito Juárez, the shortest world leader ever at 137cm, or 4ft 6in.