He was then sent to Germany, where he was interned at the Gross Kreutz estate together with Didrik Arup Seip, and carried out resistance work that saved the lives of many Scandinavian prisoners.

Among other things, the group at Gross Kreutz collected lists of names of Scandinavian prisoners, and these formed the basis for the rescue operation with the white buses.

He was the son of marine biologist, oceanographer, and director of fisheries, Johan Hjort and his wife Wanda Maria von der Marwitz.

His two sisters Astrid and Wanda soon after married German men: the two brothers Rüdiger and Georg Conrad Graf von der Goltz, and moved to Germany.

The sisters' father-in-law was the prominent General Rüdiger von der Goltz, who led the Freikorps in the Baltic States and the German intervention in the Finnish Civil War.

As a result, he was eventually tasked with an investigation assignment for Johan Egeberg Mellbye in the Farmers' Party and a position as an advisor for the Lykke government under Finance Minister Fredrik Ludvig Konow.

As Hjort prepared his economic reports, focused on the state's poor finances and the politicians' inability to balance the budget deficit, his confidence in the existing non-socialist parties weakened.

During the summer and fall, Hjort developed a plan, based on constitutional theory, for a coup d'état carried out by the government against the Storting.

To showcase the constitutional legality of the coup d'état plan, Hjort referred to 1814, 1884 and 1905; three major years in Norwegian political history.

However, the success of the plan depended on broad support, and to ensure this, a meeting was held on 26 October 1932 at the home of landowner Carl Otto Løvenskiold at Bærums Verk.

Hjort introduced and presented the plan, but it was negatively received by the old Conservative prime minister Jens Bratlie, and it also led to prominent supporter Johan Throne Holst (noteworthy industrialist and CEO of Freia) withdrawing.

Jens Hundseid's government fell in March 1933, and Polkom - in which Hjort played a central role - explored the possibility of a broad non-socialist coalition that would include the Farmers' Party, the Fatherland League, and others.

However, a lack of interest in this front meant that on 17 May, in the newspaper Tidens Tegn, Quisling presented a program for a separate party, Nasjonal Samling.

Despite the fact that Hjort was a co-founder and de facto deputy leader of NS, his ideas about the organization of the state were in theory within the limits of democracy.

In March 1935, Hjort took over the leadership of Hirden, who partly acted as security guards at NS meetings, but whose primary task was to discipline and educate its members.

The years of hectic political activity had a negative effect on Hjort's law practice; his finances had been supported by his wife's uncle Johan Throne Holst, a debt he now had to work to pay off.

Greatly provoked, Hjort contacted other pro-German Norwegians: Victor Mogens, Per Imerslund, Albert Wiesener, Otto Sverdrup Engelschiøn and Hans S. Jacobsen.

He was most outspoken in Ragnarok, where he wrote that one had to be optimistic and build the country; as "then both Norway's independence and a friendly relationship with our kindred people in the south will come as a matter of course."

Einar Gerhardsen had similar ideas,[5][6] but they were quickly torpedoed by the Germans when Terboven declared on 25 September that Nasjonal Samling was Norway's only legal political party.

It was a legal voyage through increasingly troubled waters; the Supreme Court was dismissed, and the occupation forces were constantly pushing for lawyers to adapt to the new conditions.

He also held lectures in the German-controlled Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, alongside individuals like Albert Wiesener, Jonas Lie, and Ranik Halle.

Hjort was first detained at Møllergata 19 (Oslo's main police station at the time) and then transferred to the Grini prison camp in December 1941.

The time in solitary confinement at Møllergata 19 was a difficult period for Hjort, but the community at Grini with many acquaintances made his imprisonment easier.

By October, after strong German pressure, the family had given in and settled on the Gross Kreutz estate in the village of the same name 20 km west of Potsdam.

Hjort and Vogt-Svendsen had made sketches of the camps and a note on how the collection of the prisoners in Neuengamme could be done in practical terms, and Bernadotte used this as a basis for his action.

By the end of April, most of the Norwegian prisoners had been transported home, but Johan Bernhard Hjort and his son Helge remained at Gross Kreutz.

Hjort's actions up until 25 September 1940 could be interpreted as an attempt to find a third way, between Quisling's treason and the London government's resistance to the German occupiers.

Heiberg first acknowledged Hjort's work for the resistance, but then wrote about the election in the lawyers' association: "As far as you are concerned, it would be enough for me not to vote for you that you had been a member of NS as late as 1937 and that you had still been so German-oriented (by which I do not mean odious) in the early days of the war as your statements in Tidens Tegn indicated."

(Norwegian: "For deres vedkommende vilde det for meg være nok til ikke å stemme på Dem at De overhodet hadde vært medlem av NS såpass sent som i 1937 og at De endnu i krigens første tid hadde vært såpass tyskorientert (dermed mener jeg ikke odiøst) som Deres uttalelser i Tidens Tegn gav uttrykk for.")

In 1957, in one of the most famous and widely debated court cases in Norwegian post-war history, Hjort was the defense lawyer for novelist Agnar Mykle, who was accused of immoral and obscene writing in his books.