The Wall Street market collapse and the Great Depression that followed were the most economically catastrophic events of the modern era. They affected the entire global economy, causing unemployment to skyrocket and forcing thousands of banks to close. The life savings of many evaporated, crushing the middle class that grew during the 1920s. Although Roosevelt's New Deal helped, it would take the economic boom spurred by the wartime production of WWII to truly lead the economic recovery. The Great Depression impacted the economies of many countries around the world from England, France and Germany in Western Europe sweeping around the world to Asia. Nearly every nation and its people suffered from this great economic catastrophe that began in 1929, with effects that made life difficult for people around the world for almost the entire decade of the 1930s