Its/His...lead

Open Forum in English
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Watching a documentary about the Second World War appeard a line that let me some doubts.
The part: …“Germany and its leader…” Why not his leader? or The leader? Which one is the difference?

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“its” says that something belongs to something else. So the sentence is saying that Hitler is the leader of the Nazi Party, the owner. If you said “his leader” it would imply that there was a leader of Hitler, not that Hitler was the leader. You could say “without discussing the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany and his leader, Adolf Eichmann” but that would have a different meaning. You could say “and the leader, Adolf Hitler.” But, “its” sounds a little better and makes it clear that Hitler was the driving force.

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“Its” is a possessive pronoun connecting “leader” to “the Nazi Party”. All inanimate nouns in English use neuter pronouns, so “his” is the wrong pronoun. The pronoun refers so the noun “party” which is modified by the adjective “Nazi”.

“…the leader” would not be used by native speakers in this sentence. It would be correct to say “…the Nazi Party in Germany and the leader of the party”, but that is unnecessarily wordy. Furthermore, repetition of words like that in adjacent sentences is usually avoided in English, and especially so in the same sentence.

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I don’t know whether you may be confusing “its” and “it’s”.

“Its” is a posessive pronoun like “his” and “her” and “our”, but used for singular neuter nouns. "His " is used for masculine singular nouns, and “her” for feminine. Unlike the German language, you can determine the proper English gender of an object by simple observation. :wink: Inanimate objects are always neuter. People are always masculine or feminine. Animals can use the appropriate masculine or feminine pronoun, though a neuter pronoun can be used if you don’t know its sex, or if referring to an animal in general (like I just did).

“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” and has nothing to do with the possessive pronoun “its” besides identical pronunciation and almost identical spelling.

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Thanks khardy, awesome explanation

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Thanks, very clear.

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