Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.

We bring the past to life with those who were there.

This week, broadcasting from a secret location in the cause of Indian independence from Britain.

India has no enmity for the British or any other people.

Our fight is against a system which seeks to perpetuate human injustice.

Also the remarkable story of the man who gave us the word genocide.

I can just see him in front of me.

Slightly stooped. He never sat down, he never smiled. Same threadbare suit, which had seen better days in its life.

Plus when Queen Elizabeth entertained a communist dictator and Saddam Hussein's human shields.

So they were telling us that we were guests rather than hostages. I believe it was Tariqaziz, he said something like,

well, hostages don't sit by the pool hanging out. But first, the scenes that have unfolded in

Kabul over the past week with the collapse of a government, the arrival... the

scenes that have unfolded in Kabul over the past week, with the collapse of a government, the arrival of victorious Taliban fighters,

and the chaos has frightened Afghans tried to get away

have called to mind similar scenes from nearly 50 years ago.

That was the fall of Saigon when the US cut its losses and left Vietnam.

As Winston Churchill wrote,

those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Rebecca Kessby has been looking back at those events of 1975, and Rebecca, it's striking

how similar some of the circumstances are to today's crisis in Afghanistan.

Well yes a lot of people are making this comparison so we thought we'd better look at it

again so this is right at the

...