“The idea of bochrim shaving is not new. Look at pictures of the yeshivos before the war. Bochrim in the Lita and many in Poland did not have beards or long peiyos.”
When they started shaving before the war, however, it was new and it was due to the influence of the haskala and the other winds of modernity. Just because something happened “before the war” in Europe does not make it a time honored Torah true tradition. R”L a lot of the Jewish world was frei then too.