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Awards
About the Author
Dr. James M. Deitch holds a master’s degree in military history from Norwich University and a doctoral degree in intellectual history from Liberty University. He spent most of his Marine Corps career as an operations chief, serving on deployments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Norway, and aboard the USS Saratoga. He serves as a Senior Fellow at the Patton Center for Peace and War at Norwich University. His published works focus on Strategic Studies and Military History.
THE LIBERTY DIVIDE:Pennsylvania Germans and the Forgotten Foundations of American Liberty
James M. DeitchNew Academia Publishing, 2026
326 pages
ISBN 979-8-9991798-5-2 paperback
See an excerpt from the book.
For BULK ORDERS, order directly from New Academia Publishing.
Queries: orders@newacademia.com
About the Author
Dr. James M. Deitch holds a master’s degree in military history from Norwich University and a doctoral degree in intellectual history from Liberty University. He spent most of his Marine Corps career as an operations chief, serving on deployments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Norway, and aboard the USS Saratoga. He serves as a Senior Fellow at the Patton Center for Peace and War at Norwich University. His published works focus on Strategic Studies and Military History.
THE LIBERTY DIVIDE:Pennsylvania Germans and the Forgotten Foundations of American Liberty
The Liberty Divide reveals a forgotten struggle at the heart of early Pennsylvania: two peoples living side by side yet guided by profoundly different ideas of what it meant to be free. For the colony’s Germans, freedom was spiritual, rooted in Scripture, conscience, and the bonds of Gemeinschaft—the lived obligations of community. For the English, liberty was political, shaped by classical learning, civic rights, and the evolving rhetoric of empire and revolution. These competing visions collided across religion, language, education, and public life, as leaders like Franklin, Penn, and Smith sought to assimilate a population that often comprised nearly half the colony. This book argues that America’s foundations were never defined by a single understanding of liberty or freedom, but by the friction between them. The Germans, English, and Scots‑Irish together forged a far more complex—and more revealing—origin story for the nation.
Praise
“In an era when questions of immigration and cultural integration dominate our national discourse, James M. Deitch’s book arrives as a timely beacon. It reminds us that Pennsylvania’s rich legacy stems from a spirit of inclusion, not fear. This is a lesson as relevant today as it was in 1750.”
—Brady J. Crytzer, Robert Morris University,
Pittsburgh, PA
“A free society cannot live from the word liberty alone. It must continually ask what gives that word content… James M. Deitch’s book makes an important and timely contribution to that task by recovering the Pennsylvania Germans and their distinctive understanding of freedom.”
—Marc Bergermann, Ph.D.