February: Raymond L. Libby of American Cyanamid's research laboratories at Stamford, Connecticut, announces a method of orally administering the antibiotic penicillin.

February 3: Battle of Manila: United States forces enter the outskirts of Manila to capture it from the Japanese Imperial Army, starting the battle. - The Soviet Union agrees to enter the Pacific War against Japan once hostilities against Germany are concluded.

February 4-11: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin hold the Yalta Conference.

February 6: French writer Robert Brasillach is executed for collaboration with the Germans.

February 7: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.

February 9: Walter Ulbricht becomes leader of the German Communists in Moscow. - "Black Friday": A force of Allied Bristol Beaufighter aircraft suffers heavy casualties in an unsuccessful attack on German destroyer Z33 and escorting vessels sheltering in Forde Fjord, Norway.

February 10: The troopship SS General von Steuben is sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13.

February 13: Soviet forces capture Budapest, Hungary, from the Nazis. - Royal Air Force bombing of Dresden, Germany.

February 14: Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru join the United Nations.

February 16: American and Filipino ground forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines. - Combined American and Filipino forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula. - Venezuela declares war on Germany.

February 19-February 20: 980 Japanese soldiers die as a result of a killing spree by long saltwater crocodiles in Ramree, Burma.

February 19: Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.

February 21: The last V-2-rocket is launched from Peenemünde.

February 22: Italian Front: end of the Battle of Monte Castello, after nearly three months of fighting Brazilian troops expel German forces of an pivot point in the (Tuscan) North Apennines, where their artillery was impeding the advance of British 8th Army toward Bologna; - Uruguay declares war on Germany and Japan.

February 23: Battle of Iwo Jima: A group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (taken by Joe Rosenthal), later wins a Pulitzer Prize. - The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, freed the captives of the Los Baños internment camp. - The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined American and Filipino ground troops. - American and Filipino troops enter Intramuros, Manila. - The German garrison in Poznan' capitulates to Red Army and Polish troops. - Bombing of Pforzheim: Heaviest of a series of bombing raids on Pforzheim in Germany by Allied aircraft is carried out by the British Royal Air Force. As many as 17,600 people, or 31.4% of the town's population, are killed in the raid and about 83% of the town's buildings destroyed, two-thirds of its complete area and between 80 and 100% of the inner city. - Turkey joins the war on the allies side.

February 24: The Egyptian Premier Ahmad Mahir Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree.

February 28: In Bucharest, a violent demonstration takes place, during which the bols,evic group opens fire on the army and protesters. In response, Andrei Y. Vishinsky, USSR vice commissioner of foreign affairs and president of the Allied Control Commission for Romania, travels to Bucharest to compel Nicolae Ra(descu to resign as premier. (source: Wikipedia)