Early on August 13, 1961, the East German Army, with Soviet support, began constructing a barrier of barbed wire, cinder blocks and mortar between East and West Berlin to stop the exodus of citizens fleeing oppression and dreary living conditions. Armored vehicles were deployed along the East-West sector border to prevent any popular protest, communications were severed, trains were stopped, and occupants living on the eastern side of buildings straddling the boundary were compelled to evacuate before the buildings were razed. Later, concrete slabs were erected and capped by a wide cylindrical pipe, and behind them lay a strip of land about 50 meters wide filled with tank traps, barricades, barbed wire, detectors, watch towers and guard dogs on long leads. This frontier became known as the death strip because East German guards used weapons to thwart escape attempts. The border cut through buildings, neighborhoods, and even cemeteries, and in 1985 a church was demolished because it obstructed the view of East German border guards. Berliners were deeply troubled that 29 miles of barbed wire and cement block divided their city, while an additional 70 miles encircled West Berlin and shut it off from the East German countryside. Steel and concrete ringed the hole in the Iron Curtain, dividing both a country and a city, and to the West the wall became a symbol of oppression.