After the crushing defeat in May 1942 on the Crimean Front (of 250,000 soldiers and officers on the Crimean Front in 12 days of fighting, 162,282 people, 65% were irrecoverable losses) he was removed from the post of the deputy people's commissar of defense and the chief of the main political administration of the Red Army. Witnesses claim that when Mekhlis came to Stalin shortly after the defeat, Stalin shouted at him and slammed a door in his face. He was demoted in rank two levels down to a corps commissar.