Political photographs are a poor way to judge height. Podiums, footwear, camera angle, posture and deliberate image-making can make rulers look larger or smaller than they were. This true-scale comparison places 12 dictators and authoritarian rulers on one common physical scale using the strongest standing-height evidence we could find.
The researched values run from Joseph Stalin at about 162.5 cm to Idi Amin at about 193 cm. Adolf Hitler is about 175 cm, Benito Mussolini 169 cm, Mao Zedong 180 cm, Saddam Hussein 188 cm, Muammar Gaddafi 183 cm, Pol Pot 175 cm, Augusto Pinochet 168 cm, Bashar al-Assad 189 cm, Kim Jong Un about 163 cm on a shoe-adjusted basis, and Ali Khamenei about 178 cm.
Not every number has equal evidentiary strength. Several come from medical, police, military or declassified physical records; others come from contemporary eyewitness reporting or multi-source biographical convergence. Kim Jong Un is explicitly treated as an estimate because elevated footwear complicates apparent-height comparisons. Pol Pot likewise has no primary barefoot record located, so his 175 cm value is reported as a multi-source estimate rather than a measured fact.
The lineup mixes deceased rulers with living or former rulers. Inclusion is for a neutral historical and visual comparison, not a claim that every regime was identical or a ranking of crimes. The point is narrower: how these widely known rulers compare in physical stature when perspective and footwear are controlled as far as the surviving evidence allows.