MACRON SAYS NAZI COLLABORATOR ‘A GREAT SOLDIER’

French President Emmanuel Macron waded into controversy Wednesday by praising a general who helped win the First World War but became a top Nazi collaborator in the Second World War — comments that triggered outrage among French Jews.

Marshal Philippe Petain will be honoured alongside other top military chiefs Saturday in a ceremony at the Invalides monument, site of Napoleon’s tomb, to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War.

Macron said Wednesday Petain was worthy of the honour.

“Marshal Petain was also a great soldier during World War I” even though he made “fatal choices during the Second World War,” Macron said in the town of Charleville-mezieres.

Petain led the French army to victory in Verdun in 1916, but gained infamy and a conviction for treason for his actions as leader of Vichy France from 1940 to 1944. He is despised for his complicity in the Holocaust.

“I pardon nothing, but I erase nothing of our history,” Macron added.