Dark Arts, Dark Acts: The Redacted Sherlock Holmes

It has taken over eighty years, but at long last the British government's embargo on reporting this slice of diplomatic history has been lifted.

It was in November 1940, that a senior minister at the British Foreign Office in blacked-out London commissioned Holmes and Watson to go to Berlin negotiate a prisoner of war swap with the German high-command.

And the price demanded by Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Göbbels, for any prisoner release? That the two work with the Berlin police to capt...