The purpose of the Trade Opposition was to use the recent German occupation of Norway for the better, in the then-absence of a real "bourgeois" political authority.
The Trade Opposition leader Håkon Meyer became more content with cooperating with the Nazis, including the Norwegian Fascist party,[3] and on 28 September 1940 Tangen was ordered by the Nazis to assume the chairmanship of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions.
Tangen was arrested[2] and imprisoned in Grini concentration camp from 10 September 1941 to 27 February 1942, and then at Møllergata 19 for one week.
[2] Ludvik Buland was imprisoned and died in Germany,[4] whereas the head of the judicial office in the Confederation, Viggo Hansteen, was executed.
However, Tangen was acquitted of treason by Oslo City Court in 1949, as a part of the legal purge in Norway after World War II.