the legal basis of the work of the icrc during world war ii was the geneva conventions in their 1929 revision. the activities of the committee were similar to those during world war i: visiting and monitoring pow camps, organizing relief assistance for civilian populations, and administering the exchange of messages regarding prisoners and missing persons. by the end of the war, 179 delegates had conducted 12,750 visits to pow camps in 41 countries. the central information agency on prisoners-of-war ("zentralauskunftsstelle für kriegsgefangene") had a staff of 3,000, the card index tracking prisoners contained 45 million cards, and 120 million messages were exchanged by the agency. one major obstacle was that the nazi-controlled german red cross refused to cooperate with the geneva statutes including blatant violations such as the deportation of jews from germany and the mass murders conducted in the concentration camps run by the german government. moreover, two other main parties to the conflict, the soviet union and japan, were not party to the 1929 geneva conventions and were not legally required to follow the rules of the conventions.