Walter Benjamin never wrote extensively on German cinema. Among the different versions of the ‘Work of Art’ essay, he only mentions one German film, Frederick the Great (dir. Arzén von Cserépy, 1921–1923), in the earliest, handwritten text, as an example of a historical film, without providing any further details or analysis. In ‘Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz’, the article in which he defends Battleship Potemkin, Benjamin makes a more valuable— although vague—remark about the films produced by the Universum Film AG, the major German film company better known as UFA. In that text, he criticizes the monumental quality of the representation of mass movements in these films in comparison to the architectonic quality of Battleship Potemkin. Despite these scarce and vague references to German cinema, the theses of the ‘Work of Art’ are largely intended to counteract the use of the film apparatus by fascism, and to analyse and reflect on the way that National Socialism was mobilizing film technology. Benjamin's critique of the aestheticization of politics, which he develops in depth in this essay, must be traced back to his preoccupation with ‘the bungled [verungluckte] reception of technology’ in Germany. To extend this critique, it is necessary to analyse ‘Theories of German Fascism’ (1930) closely.