Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC with me Max Pearson and the dedicated

team who seek out for the World Service witnesses to important moments from the past.

This week a rare glimpse of Kim Il-Sung, the founding father of communist North Korea.

My school seniors said he was all raised a football team captain.

They also said Kim was a bossy child who ordered the other kids around.

Also the 1980-Gudansk shipyard strike in Poland, which many see is the beginning of the end of

communism there.

There were no mobile phones, no smartphones, no internet. You wrote

on whatever you could get your hands on, whether it be paper or wood. Plus, a Sicilian businessman who paid the ultimate price for standing up to the mafia,

and the electric car, circa 1995. It didn't exactly catch on, but it wasn't all bad.

Even with the batteries of the time, it was possible to make a car that would do zero to

60 miles an hour and 8 seconds.

That's all coming up later in the podcast.

But first, a moment in 20th century history

that uncannily reflects what's going on right now in Afghanistan.

The US stuck to its commitment to withdraw all its forces by the end of last month,

but in the final pullout, thousands of Afghans who had helped the American-led international involvement in Afghanistan over 20 years have been left behind.

They face an uncertain future.

As did those who had helped the Americans in Vietnam nearly 50 years earlier. Alex Last has been finding out what it was like

for them Alex yeah hi Max as you said back in 1975 some two years after the

withdrawal of US forces, South Vietnam fell to communist

North Vietnamese forces and we actually recently ran a piece about the US airlift

...