A friend asked me to answer this question: What was the full German name of the group that issued extensive guidelines, ranging from the width of avenues that carried streetcar lines to the ratio of theatre seats to inhabitants?, using the article: In February 1942, following the death of Fritz Todt, Hitler appointed Speer as Minister of Armaments and War Production.  Wolters followed Speer to his new ministry, becoming head of the Department of Culture, Media, and Propaganda of the Organization Todt.  Wolters continued his Chronik in the new position.In December 1943, Speer put Wolters in charge of planning for the reconstruction of bombed German cities.  Wolters organized a working group of about twenty architects and city planners, mostly from northern Germany.  The work of this group, known as the Arbeitsstab Wiederaufbauplanung (Task Force for Reconstruction Planning), would form the basis for the actual postwar reconstruction of Germany.  Speer, who authorized the group, saw an opportunity to make German cities more habitable in the age of the automobile.  The group sought solutions which would use the existing street system, rather than the grand ceremonial boulevards common in Nazi city planning.  In addition, the Arbeitsstab issued extensive guidelines, ranging from the width of avenues that carried streetcar lines to the ratio of theatre seats to inhabitants.Wolters rarely met Hitler, and only in the company of other members of Speer's office.  He later recorded,
Of course, from these few experiences, I cannot judge Hitler's personality, but having shared with Speer his virtually daily contacts with him, and being familiar with Hitler's ideas, for example, on town planning, I think that commentators are making it easy for themselves now when, as they frequently do, they resort in their descriptions to simplistic epitaphs such as "buck private", "wall painter", "petit-bourgeois philistine", or "history's greatest criminal"., what would be the answer ?



Arbeitsstab Wiederaufbauplanung