Rommel was one of the most brilliant generals of the war, but his brilliance was somewhat tempered by his flaws. Probably his biggest flaw, or at least the one that acted most to blunt the effects of his genius, was his inability to persuade others, particularly his peers and superiors, of the correctness of his position.

Examples:

1. He knew from his experience as the only German Field Marshal to face the Allies under the umbrella of complete Allied air superiority that the basing of the German reserves far from the beaches would lead to disaster.

2. He knew that one or two more armored divisions in the USSR would be relatively minor while those same forces in North Africa could yield enormous benefits in 1941-42.

3. He knew that trying to hold the line and defend the position at El Alamein was a hopeless cause and that those forces would be far better employed if they fell back along their supply lines and made their stand at a later time and in a better position.

In each of these cases he immediately identified the correct course of action and then took the head on approach to try to convince his superiors of it. But in each case his headstrong "I am right and you are wrong" attitude simply made the people he was trying to convince close their ears to his arguments. It is odd that someone who so favored the indirect approach in battle had not the slightest clue how to use it in diplomacy. In the above cases it led to:

1. Runstedt's original plan for placing the mobile reserves well behind the coastal defenses was endorsed and those reserves were largely disrupted, reduced and in some cases outrightly destroyed by massive Allied air attacks before they could play any part in the bridgehead battles.

2. His forces were always kept relatively small and well below the level necessary to maintain any balance with the British 8th Army, let alone strong enough to truly defeat the British and seize the Suez Canal, which would have been a huge blow to the British and given Germany access to the oil fields of the Middle East.

3. He was ordered to stand because he was now being seen as a defeatist for flatly stating the truth that his forces and supplies were completely inadequate to defend that position against the massively superior British forces. As a result his forces were mauled in situ and a great many highly experience German and Italian soldiers marched into prisoner of war camps, to be later replaced by soldiers and officers whose only experience was in the vastly different theater of the Russian front.

So basically my opinion is that his greatest enemy was his own mouth.