attack Northern Greece from bases in Romania and Bulgaria in support of his master plan to deprive the British of Mediterranean bases. On 12 November, the German Armed Forces High Command issued Directive No. 18, in which they scheduled simultaneous operations against Gibraltar and Greece for the following January. On 17 November 1940, Metaxas proposed a joint offensive in the Balkans to the British government, with Greek strongholds in southern Albania as the operational base. The British were reluctant to discuss Metaxas' proposal, because the troops necessary for implementing the Greek plan would seriously endanger operations in North Africa. In December 1940, German ambitions in the Mediterranean underwent considerable revision when Spain's General Francisco Franco rejected the Gibraltar attack. Consequently, Germany's offensive in southern Europe was restricted to the Greek campaign. The Armed Forces High Command issued Directive No. 20 on 13 December 1940, outlining the Greek campaign under the code designation Operation Marita. The plan was to occupy the northern coast of the Aegean Sea by March 1941 and to seize the entire Greek mainland, if necessary. To attack Greece would require going through Yugoslavia and/or Bulgaria. The Regent of Yugoslavia for the boy king Peter II, Prince Paul was married to a Greek princess and refused the German request for transit rights to invade Greece. King Boris III of Bulgaria had long-standing territorial disputes with Greece, and was more open to granting transit rights to the Wehrmacht in exchange for a promise to have the parts of Greece that he coveted. In January 1941, Bulgaria granted the transit rights to the Wehrmacht. During a meeting of British and Greek military and political leaders in Athens on 13 January 1941, General Alexandros Papagos, Commander-in-Chief of the Hellenic Army, asked Britain for nine fully equipped divisions and corresponding air support. The British responded that all they could offer was the immediate dispatch of a token force of less than divisional strength. This offer was rejected by the Greeks, who feared that the arrival of such a contingent would precipitate a German attack without giving them meaningful assistance. British help would be requested if and when German troops crossed the Danube from Romania into Bulgaria. The Greek leader, General Metaxas, did not particularly want British forces on the mainland of Greece as he feared it would lead to a German invasion of his country and during the winter of 1940–41 secretly