In 1942, the Bulgarian club asked assistance from the German High command in organizing armed units among the Bulgarian population in northern Greece. For this purpose, the Bulgarian army, under the approval of the German forces in the Balkans sent a handful of officers to the zones occupied by the Italian and German troops to be attached to the occupying forces as "liaison officers". One of them was Kalchev. These officers were given the objective to form armed Bulgarian militias. Bulgaria was interested in acquiring the zones under Italian and German occupation and hopped to sway the allegiance of the 80,000 Bulgarophones who lived there at the time.