To assuage the demands of refugees and their supporters, Adenauer and the CDU kept a hard line towards the East. In international relations Bonn insisted that Germany’s 1937 frontiers remain legally in force until a final Peace Conference. Under the Hallstein Doctrine propounded in 1955, the Federal Republic refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognized the GDR (and thereby implicitly denied Bonn’s claim under the 1949 Basic Law to represent all Germans). The only exception was the Soviet Union. Bonn’s rigidity was demonstrated in 1957 when Adenauer broke off diplomatic
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