Between 1950 and 1988, around 4 million East Germans migrated to the West; 3.454 million left between 1950 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. After the border was fortified and the Berlin Wall constructed, the number of illegal crossings fell dramatically and continued to fall as the defences were improved over the subsequent decades. However, escapees were never more than a small minority of the total number of emigrants from East Germany.