French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday it was "legitimate" to pay tribute to Marshal Philippe Petain, who led the French army to victory in World War I's Battle of Verdun but decades later collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
Macron's plan to honor Petain alongside seven other French marshals who directed military campaigns during World War I, which ended 100 years ago on Nov. 11, has unleashed criticism from Jewish groups, political opponents and on social media.
Touring battlefields ahead of a formal commemoration of the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice that ended the war, Macron said Petain was worthy of the honor for his leading role in the World War I victory.
"I consider it entirely legitimate that we pay homage to the marshals who led our army to victory," Macron said in the eastern town of Charleville-Mezieres that once lay on the front line between French and German troops.
"Marshal Petain was also a great soldier during World War I" even though he made "fatal choices during the World War II," Macron said.
Macron's office appeared to backtrack later on Wednesday.
"Petain won't be honored on Nov. 10," an Elysee official said, adding that only the five marshals who were buried at the Invalides monument in Paris would receive an official tribute.
Macron will not attend the military ceremony.
Wednesday's remarks struck a deep chord in a nation that has lived through two world wars and only in recent decades has acknowledged its collaborationist past.
Former President Jacques Chirac admitted in 1995 that Petain's Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis, was the French state. Chirac spoke at the Vel' d'Hiv cycling stadium in Paris, known for a 1942 roundup of French Jews that saw 13,000 people deported to Nazi concentration camps, a third of them children.
Macron himself later told reporters his intention was not to excuse the crimes committed by Petain during World War II but to ensure French history was accurately remembered.
"I don't forgive anything but I don't erase anything from our history," he said. "I will always fight against anti-Semitism."
Renowned as a "soldier's soldier," Petain was promoted to commander-in-chief of the French armies in mid-1917, after victory at Verdun, rebuilding troop morale after a series of mutinies and other setbacks.
Verdun was the longest battle of World War I, killing more than 300,000 French and German soldiers during 10 months of trench battles. Petain emerged from the Great War as a national hero with streets in towns and cities across France named after him.
Two decades later, with France poised to fall to Nazi German forces in World War II, Petain was appointed prime minister of France. His administration, based in the unoccupied part of the country known as Vichy France, collaborated with Nazi Germany and its deportation and extermination of the Jews.
After the war, Petain was sentenced to death for treason, though then-President General Charles de Gaulle, a longtime admirer of Petain's military feats of arms, reduced the punishment to life in prison.
France's leading Jewish organization, known by the initials CRIF, issued a searing criticism of Macron's stance.
"It is shocking that France can pay tribute to a man deemed unworthy of being French in a trial held in the name of the people," said CRIF President Francis Kalifat.
"Petain was the person who allowed the deportation of 76,000 French Jews to death camps. Petain signed the [law on] the status of Jews that meant Jews were excluded from public functions, education and forced to wear the Jewish star."
He said it was "an insult" that a French president could honor Petain on "the same level as the other generals," but acknowledged the marshal's pivotal role in the Great War that earned him the nickname "Lion of Verdun."
Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of the hard-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party, wrote on Twitter: "Marshal Joffre was the military victor of the 1914-18 war. Petain was a traitor and an anti-Semite. His crimes and his betrayal cannot be erased from history. Macron, this time, you've gone too far.
"The history of France isn't your toy," he tweeted. "This anti-Semitic traitor cannot be amnestied by the caprice of Macron."
French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux insisted the issue was a "false controversy." He quoted Gen. Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces in World War II and the nation's universal hero, as saying of Petain in 1966 that "the glory he earned in Verdun .... can be neither contested nor go unrecognized by the nation."
Petain died in prison in 1951 aged 95.
