Ramm developed tuberculosis. Even now he refused the offer of better food and conditions in exchange for making goods for the Germans. He became weaker and weaker, and was released through a compassionate act by the prison Governor, who had come to respect him. The Danish ambulance which was sent for him crossed the frontier just ahead of a Nazi order forbidding his release, and he reached Odense. There he died, a Norwegian flag in his hand placed there by a Danish friend. When Ramm's body arrived in Oslo, crowds thronged the Cathedral Square, ignoring every attempt to coerce them into dispersing, and when the news reached the Norwegian government in exile in London, Foreign Minister Koht said, 'When the history of these times comes to be written, Fredrik Ramm's name will go down as one of Norway's greatest heroes.'56

The active Church resistance in Norway was triggered off by Fjellbu, by now a bishop. On 1 February 1942, the day that Quisling took office as Prime Minister, he found Trondheim Cathedral locked against him when he went to celebrate Holy Communion. Nazi soldiers were telling the congregation to go home, but they would not. Fjellbu slipped in by a small side door, robed and started the service from the High Altar. The soldiers did not dare arrest him there, and the choir, having taken their position, began singing 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God'. Soon the congregation, standing in the snow outside, took it up. For that morning's work, Fjellbu was removed from office. At once all the Norwegian bishops, led by Berggrav and followed by the clergy, laid down the secular duties normally prescribed to them as part of the state Church. On Easter Day all Norwegian pastors followed suit, and at the same time Bishop Berggrav was arrested. It was expected that he would be tried and convicted, because he had visited England in 1940; but suddenly he was moved from prison to the mountain hut where he spent three years in lonely house arrest. Berlin had intervened.

The intervention was initiated by the Abwehr, and the two emissaries sent by Admiral Canaris, who secretly worked against Hitler and ultimately was executed by him, were Bonhoeffer and Bonhoeffer's friend, von Moltke. So Bonhoeffer saw in action in Norway the very type of resistance he had advocated to the Church in Germany ten years earlier.57 Comparison between the two situations is impossible, since it was one thing to achieve a united resistance in an occupied country, and another to create it in Germany once Hitler had become established. However, such unity in Norway was achieved in the face of great risks, and would have been impossible without the healing of bitter divisions which had taken place there from1934 onwards.

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