The PNȚ was banned under the National Renaissance Front (1938–1940), which also absorbed its centrists. Regrouped under Maniu, it remained active throughout World War II as an underground organization, tolerated by successive fascist regimes, but supportive of the Allied Powers; it also organized protests against the deportation of minorities and for the return of Northern Transylvania. Together with the PNL and the communists, it executed the Coup of August 1944, emerging as the most powerful party of the subsequent democratic interlude (1944–1946). In this final period, National Peasantists were repressed as instigators of anti-communist resistance. The PNȚ was registered as having lost the fraudulent elections in 1946, and was banned following the "Tămădău Affair" of 1947. The communist regime imprisoned its members in large numbers, though some on the pro-communist left were allowed to go free. Both Maniu and his more leftist deputy Ion Mihalache died in prison.