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The French president said it was "legitimate" to pay tribute to Field Marshal Philippe Petain, who had led the French army to victory during the First World War, but had collaborated decades later with the Nazi Germany.
Emmanuel Macron's plan to honor Pétain alongside seven other French marshals who led the military campaigns of the First World War, which ended 100 years ago on November 11, has sparked criticism from Jewish groups , political opponents and social media.
"I consider it perfectly legitimate for us to pay tribute to the marshals who led our army to victory," said Macron in Charleville-Mézières, in the east of the country, who was once on the front between French and German troops.
"Marshal Petain was a great soldier of the First World War."
Recognized as a "soldier", Pétain was promoted to commander-in-chief of the French armies in mid-1917, after the victory at Verdun, restoring morale after a series of mutinies and other setbacks.
Verdun was the longest battle of the war; More than 300,000 French and German soldiers were killed in ten months of fighting in the trenches. Petain appeared as a national hero and many streets of French cities were named in his honor.
Two decades later, when the country was about to fall into the hands of German forces during the Second World War, Petain was appointed Prime Minister of France. His administration, based in the unoccupied part of the country known as Vichy France, collaborated with the Nazis for the deportation and extermination of the Jews.
After the war, Petain was sentenced to death for treason, but President Charles de Gaulle, a long-time admirer of Petain, reduced the sentence to life imprisonment.
"It is shocking that France can pay homage to a man deemed unworthy to be French in a lawsuit held in the name of the people," said Francis Kalifat, president of Crif, the body that represents the 400,000 Jews of France.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, president of the French left party Insoumise (France Unbowed), wrote on Twitter: "Marshal Joffre was the military winner of the 1914-1918 war. Petain was a traitor and an anti-Semite. His crimes and betrayal can not be erased from history. Macron, this time, you went too far. "
Petain died in prison in 1951 at the age of 95.
