The propaganda piece wasn't true. Rommel was never a Party member. He did not leave the Army in the interwar years, but was an officer in the 100,000 strong army of the Wiemar Republic. While an instructor he wrote Infantry Attacks, which became a very admired book on tactics. Hitler met Rommel at a unit inspection, read the book and developed an admiration for him. That lead to a fast rise through the ranks, undoubtedly to the resentment of the Prussian establishment.
That said, Rommel did become a friend of Hitler and Goebbels and there is no evidence his loyalty wavered until he was witnessing the destruction of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, which disillusioned a great many officers.
I only glanced at the piece in the paper, but your summary matches the several biographies of Rommel I have read.
Rommel remains something of an enigma. He did benefit from his relationship with Hitler to rise quickly through the ranks. He has that in common with von Manstein, Model and Speer. What all of them have in common is that they were talented, and not just political cronies. Hitler had an eye for talent in some people, and was totally blind as to others. But as to these four people, Rommel may actually have been the least talented, and I’m still not certain whether he was that good, that lucky, or the product of Goebbels’ propaganda.
Rommel earned the job in Africa with his energetic and aggressive leadership of 7th Panzer Division in France. His conduct of the Desert War against the British was exemplary. Friends of mine who are into war gaming and play Afrika Corps games say they can never beat the British as Rommel did. Rommel’s real talent was the uncanny ability to be at the exact right spot on the battlefield at the right time, to act decisively when he was there, and inspire his troops to carry out his commands. But such a talent actually imposes a limit on how high you can effectively command. A corps commander can do this, but not an army or army group commander. A good number of German generals opined that on the Eastern Front, Rommel would have been just another competent panzer corps commander, of which the Germans had several. I will admit that many of those generals did have professional jealousy of Rommel, so you have to take their opinions with a grain of salt.
Rommel did fight with a sense of “chivalry,” if you will. Under his leadership, there were no atrocities between the Germans and British in North Africa. I attribute this to directly to his attitude and leadership. I do not believe Rommel would have permitted his troops to shoot British wounded, for example. Again, one wonders whether such courtesies would have been extended to the Soviets. He also did not have any SS units fighting under his control.
In France, Rommel was clearly correct in his idea that the Allies had to be stopped at the water’s edge. He had personally experienced allied air domination, and knew that if the allies established a beachhead, their air power would eventually overwhelm the Germans. Eastern Front generals like Geyr von Schweppenburg, wanted to let the Allies land and then defeat them in the interior of France in a battle of maneuver. Rommel knew they were wrong. But when you get down to it, it is doubtful he would have fared any better than his successor von Kluge once the allies unleashed Operation Cobra and broke out of Normandy. The portions of his memoirs written about Normandy read a lot like the Battle of El Alamein. His troops were getting ground down and he couldn’t stop it. There was something about looking at the casualty lists and he realized he was losing a regiment a day.
As for his relations with his troops, it is historically accepted that he looked out for them and they respected him. Anecdotally, I heard a contrary opinion from a German veteran who fought for Rommel in North Africa and for Kesselring in Italy. Hamrad despised Rommel, and thought Rommel was a glory hound who made himself look good over the bodies of his soldiers. He had a much higher opinion of Kesselring.
I think there is a lot of merit to the idea that Rommel was all for Hitler and the Nazis while he received personal career benefits. He was willing to turn a blind eye to some of the worse aspects of the Nazi regime. He certainly didn’t have to experience much of that fighting in North Africa. One wonders what he would have done with the Sonderkommandos had he been posted to the Russian Front. He only became disillusioned when the war turned against Germany.
I’ve read Liddel-Hart’s edited version of Rommel’s intended memoirs, “The Rommel Papers.” Yes, it’s pretty self-serving, as all memoirs are. It’s still a good read. His description of the destruction of the Italian Ariete armored division at El Alamein is a sad and moving tribute to his Italian allies. But the best line is the last one in the book, about the German prospects in late 1944:
“The skies over Germany have grown very dark.”