war correspondent Joseph Morton, nine OSS men, and four SOE agents are executed by the Germans at Mauthausen concentration camp under Hitler's Commando Order of 1942, which stipulates the immediate execution of all captured Allied commandos or saboteurs without trial, even those in proper uniforms. Morton is the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during the war. January 26 – WWII: 19-year-old U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Audie Murphy sees action at Holtzwihr, France, for which is awarded the Medal of Honor. January 27 – The Holocaust: The Soviet Red Army liberates the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. January 30 – WWII: , with over 10,000 mainly civilian Germans from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) is sunk in Gdańsk Bay by three torpedoes from Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea; up to 9,400, 5,000 of whom are children, are thought to have died – the greatest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history. Raid at Cabanatuan: 121 American soldiers and 800 Filipino guerrillas free 813 American prisoners of war from the Japanese-held camp in the city of Cabanatuan, in the Philippines. Adolf Hitler makes his last public speech, on broadcast radio, expressing the belief that Germany will triumph. January 31 – WWII: The Battle of Hill 170 in the Burma Campaign ends with the British 3rd Commando Brigade defeating the Imperial Japanese Army 54th Division, causing the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army to withdraw from the Arakan Peninsula. February February – Raymond L. Libby of American Cyanamid's research laboratories, at Stamford, Connecticut, announces a method of orally administering the antibiotic penicillin. February 3 – WWII: Battle of Manila: United States forces enter the outskirts of Manila to capture it from the Japanese Imperial Army, starting the battle. On February 4, U.S. Army forces liberate Santo Tomas Internment Camp in the city. The Soviet Union agrees to enter the Pacific War against Japan, once hostilities against Germany are concluded. February 4–11 – WWII: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin hold the Yalta Conference. February 7 – WWII: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila. February 8 – The Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, championed by charismatic native leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, is passed by the territorial Senate, after the legislature defeated a previous bill in 1943. February 9 Walter Ulbricht becomes leader of the German Communists in Moscow. WWII: "Black Friday":