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POPSThe story behind Hitler's moustache The prosaic explanation comes in a new biography of the writer Alexander Moritz Frey, who came to know him when both were lowly privates in a Bavarian infantry division. In a hitherto unpublished essay, Frey, who died in 1957, wrote of his first meeting with Hitler in 1915: "A pale, tall man tumbled down into the cellar after the first shells of the daily evening attacks had begun to fall, fear and rage glowing in his eyes. "At that time he looked tall because he was so thin. A full moustache, which had to be trimmed later because of the new gas masks, covered the ugly slit of his mouth."