“One of ours, all of yours”: Nazi slogan or not?

In January 2025, cameras zoomed in on a podium at a Department of Homeland Security press event. Under the seal, a slogan ran in block letters: “One of ours, all of yours.”

Within hours, musician Tom Morello was on Instagram calling it a “verbatim Nazi mass murder slogan.” The accusation ricocheted around social media. Commenters filled in the blanks: this had to be a direct quote from Hitler, Himmler, or some SS handbook on reprisals.

There was one problem. Historians who actually work on Nazi Germany could not find this phrase in any documented Nazi source.

So what is “One of ours, all of yours”? Where does it come from, what does it sound like, and how does it connect to real Nazi practice? By the end of this piece, you will know what historians can say with confidence, what is speculation, and how Nazi collective punishment really worked in practice.

1. What we can (and can’t) say about the phrase itself

The first thing to establish is simple: there is no known Nazi-era document, speech, or propaganda poster that uses the exact phrase “One of ours, all of yours” in German or English.

Professional historians of Nazi Germany, Holocaust research institutes, and major archives have not produced any example of this slogan in period sources. That does not mean some soldier in a trench never muttered something similar. It does mean we lack evidence for it as a formal, recognizable Nazi slogan.

When Morello called it a “verbatim Nazi mass murder slogan,” he was making a very specific claim: that this wording was used by Nazis to justify killing civilians in retaliation. That would leave a paper trail. The Nazi state was bureaucratic, obsessed with paperwork, and very fond of slogans. Famous ones are easy to find: “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (“One people, one Reich, one leader”), “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”), “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz” (“The common good before self-interest”).

“One of ours, all of yours” does not appear in those catalogues. Researchers and historically minded internet users have searched German-language databases, digitized newspapers, and collections of Nazi posters and pamphlets. No hit. Holocaust museums and memorials have not documented it either.

So where did the phrase come from? The record is murky. It sounds like a modern English-language distillation of a very old idea: collective reprisal. It may have been coined by a speechwriter or consultant to sound tough and retaliatory, without any direct Nazi borrowing. It may also echo postwar pop culture, where revenge slogans are common in movies and novels.

The key point is this: “One of ours, all of yours” is not a documented historical Nazi slogan. It is a contemporary phrase that resembles how people imagine Nazi logic sounded, which is exactly why it triggered such a strong reaction.

That matters because if you label something a “verbatim Nazi slogan,” you are not just criticizing the sentiment. You are making a factual historical claim. On the evidence we have, that claim does not hold up.

2. Real Nazi collective punishment: what it actually looked like

Even if the exact phrase is modern, the idea behind it is not. Nazi Germany did practice collective punishment on a massive scale, especially in occupied Europe.

Collective punishment means punishing a group for the actions of individuals. In Nazi practice, this often meant killing civilians or destroying villages in response to resistance attacks. The logic was simple and brutal: if one German soldier was killed, many locals would die, so that fear would suppress resistance.

One of the most infamous examples is the Czech village of Lidice. On 10 June 1942, after Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, died from an assassination attempt, the Nazis chose Lidice as a target for reprisal. They shot the men, deported the women to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and sent many children to be killed or “Germanized.” The village was burned and bulldozed.

In France, the SS massacred the inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944, after a Waffen-SS officer was kidnapped by the Resistance. Over 600 civilians were killed. The ruins of Oradour were left in place after the war as a memorial.

In occupied Yugoslavia and Greece, German orders sometimes specified exact ratios: 50 or 100 hostages shot for each German soldier killed. General Franz Böhme in Serbia issued such directives in 1941. That cold arithmetic is closer to the real language of Nazi reprisals than any catchy slogan.

So while “One of ours, all of yours” is not traceable as a Nazi catchphrase, the sentiment it expresses is very close to how Nazi occupation policy worked on the ground. That matters because it explains why people instinctively associated the phrase with Nazism, even if the wording itself is new.

3. Why the phrase sounds Nazi: language, threats, and memory

If the words are modern, why did so many people instantly hear “Nazi” in them? Part of the answer lies in how authoritarian regimes talk about enemies and punishment.

Threatening slogans that promise disproportionate retaliation are a staple of 20th century warfare. During the Second World War, German occupation authorities posted notices threatening hostages in case of attacks. In French, Dutch, Polish, and other languages, posters warned that civilians would be shot if partisans struck. The wording varied, but the message was consistent: hurt one of ours, we will hurt many of you.

In English-language memory, that logic has been compressed into simple formulas. Films and novels about Nazis often exaggerate or simplify the language for dramatic effect. A screenwriter might put a line like “For every one of ours, we will kill ten of yours” into the mouth of a fictional SS officer. Over time, those invented lines feel historically authentic, even when they are not direct quotes.

There is also a broader rhetorical pattern. Slogans that divide the world into “ours” and “yours” and promise sweeping retaliation fit neatly into how we remember fascist and totalitarian speech. The rhythm of “One of ours, all of yours” echoes that memory: short, menacing, collective.

Tom Morello’s accusation tapped into that cultural memory. He was not citing an archival document. He was reacting to a phrase that sounded like the distilled logic of Nazi reprisals. The problem is that public debate blurred the line between “this sounds like Nazi thinking” and “this is a literal Nazi slogan.”

That matters because public memory of Nazism is already heavily shaped by postwar culture. When we mistake movie-Nazi language for real Nazi language, we risk basing serious accusations on scripts rather than sources.

4. How historians actually check a claim like this

When someone claims a phrase is a “verbatim Nazi slogan,” historians do not just shrug or rely on vibes. There are concrete ways to test the claim.

First, they check the obvious places. Collections of Nazi propaganda posters, such as those held by the German Federal Archives or the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Digitized newspapers from the Third Reich. Published collections of speeches by Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and other top officials. These are searchable by keyword in German.

Second, they look at specialized scholarship. Historians who study Nazi propaganda have catalogued common slogans and themes. Works by Ian Kershaw, Jeffrey Herf, or David Welch, among others, discuss how slogans were crafted and deployed. Researchers in Holocaust studies have combed through orders and reports from SS and police units that carried out reprisals.

Third, they consider language. If “One of ours, all of yours” were a direct translation, what would the German likely be? Something like “Einer von uns, alle von euch” or “Wenn einer von uns fällt, sterben alle von euch.” Those phrases can be tested in German databases. As of now, no such phrase appears in period Nazi sources in a way that matches the claim.

Finally, historians look for secondary confirmation. If a slogan was widely used, survivors, resisters, or postwar trials often mention it. For example, “Arbeit macht frei” is documented on camp gates and in survivor testimony. No such body of evidence exists for “One of ours, all of yours.”

That process matters because it shows why historians have been careful. They are not defending the DHS slogan. They are defending the difference between “this is morally ugly” and “this is a documented Nazi quote.”

5. Why mislabeling modern rhetoric as ‘Nazi’ is a problem

Calling something “Nazi” is not just an insult. It is a specific historical charge tied to one of the most documented regimes in history. When that charge rests on shaky factual ground, it creates several problems.

First, it weakens criticism. If opponents of a policy or politician make a claim that can be fact-checked and disproven, supporters will seize on that error to dismiss the entire critique. In this case, defenders could say, “Historians found no Nazi source for this slogan, so the whole outrage is overblown.” The moral concern about collective punishment rhetoric gets lost in a fight over accuracy.

Second, it blurs real Nazi history. There were actual Nazi slogans, actual orders, and actual massacres carried out in the name of collective reprisal. When we attach the label “Nazi slogan” to phrases that are not documented, we create noise around the signal. Future students trying to sort myth from reality will have to wade through our misstatements too.

Third, it feeds a broader trend where “Nazi” becomes a catch-all for anything authoritarian or violent. That inflation of the term can dull its meaning. The Nazis did specific things, to specific people, in specific ways. Precision is not pedantic. It is part of respecting the victims and the historical record.

None of this means modern officials get a pass for using rhetoric that echoes the logic of collective punishment. A slogan like “One of ours, all of yours” carries an obvious threat: if you hurt one of us, we will treat all of you as fair game. That is morally and politically significant even without a direct line to Hitler’s Germany.

So the mislabeling matters because it lets people argue about whether a phrase is “really Nazi” instead of confronting what the phrase actually says about how the state views “us” and “them.”

The short answer to the original Reddit question is this: historians have not found “One of ours, all of yours” in Nazi-era sources, and there is no solid evidence that it was an official Nazi slogan. What the phrase does do is echo the logic of collective punishment that Nazi Germany, and other regimes, used in practice.

That distinction matters. If we care about learning from the past, we have to get the past right. We can condemn modern rhetoric for what it is, without inventing a quotation to make the point.