I think Tchocky has it right - you aren't really referencing anything specifically at all. The question is a bit broad. Are you asking why people feel Rommel was a "good guy" and not considered a typical Nazi? Are you asking if German weaponry was or was not in fact superior to Allied weaponry, and if so what nation are you wanting a comparison for?

Also the question of "why are people quick to defend the German military" lacks context. Who and in what way?

Need some specifics and a clear direction of what you need to know :)

It's undeniable that there is a certain mystique that surrounds the German military that does not extend to other militaries. This is a complex topic as it mixes cultural memory of the German military, postwar hobbyist culture, and Cold War politics.

In a provocative and entertaining book, Robert Citino argues that German military culture has emphasized offensive thinking and quick operations over drawn-out campaigns. According to Citino, this mentality was born out of necessity as Germany's central location and relative lack of resources meant it would lose a long campaign. While Citino oversimplifies matters, the earlier half of the book might better have been entitled The Prussian Way of War, there is much to be said to his approach. This mentality did become institutionalized in Prussian and later German military culture and organs like the Militär-Wochenblatt. And despite the fact that this offensive approach predicated on short decisive campaigns was flawed, it sometimes paid off spectacularly for the Prussians/Germans. At Rossbach in 1757, Sedan in 1870, and France in 1940, the Germans won some truly impressive victories against foes who greatly outnumbered them. The cultural memory of these victories became integral for state propaganda for subsequent generations. The state's emphasis upon decisive victory against the odds eclipsed instances when German military performance was less than stellar. Furthermore, the narrative of decisive victory against the odds had a strong romantic component to it, especially in the nineteenth century. In short, the German military heroes lionized by the German state(s) such as Frederick the Great, "Vater" Blücher, or Moltke the Elder seemingly lived up to an idealized image of military genius. This valorization did not stop at the Elbe or Rhine. Thomas Carlye's biography of Frederick the Great famously portrayed him as a genius who could transcend the problems on the battlefield. Although the popular perception of German military efficiency assumed a more sinister tone outside of Germany in the twentieth century, it still remained in the public's consciousness. The 1940 campaign and the associated victories of Blitzkrieg also brought this image of German military efficiency into an age of mass communications. Again, the drama inherent to Hitler's victories (defeating France in about six weeks was very unexpected in 1940) obscured the Wehrmacht's setbacks and shortcomings. Anglophone propaganda would emphasize the martial character of German culture, politics, and history, emphasizing a clear connection between Frederick the Great, Bismarck, to Hitler. An important component of this propaganda was the idea that this German militarism was dangerous if unchecked (again emphasizing Germans' innate military efficiency) and needed to be eliminated in the postwar.

This negative image of German militarism seemed to have a great deal of traction in the postwar milieu. Public opinion polls in Britain and the US showed there was a clear association with the German military and the crimes of National Socialism. But the Cold War arrested this critique. There was a concerted effort by some conservative German intellectuals and military veterans to create a picture of an ideologically clean Wehrmacht that was distinct from National Socialism. Partly, this was to restore the battered image of the veteran in Germany itself, but it also had a strong anticommunist component to it. This sanitized vision of German conduct and effectiveness found an audience in the anglophone sphere as the first decades of the postwar period saw a massive growth in publishing about the war. The Cold War was a significant barrier for the Western audience to get the Soviet perspective on the war. The German veterans were able to define the narrative of the very theater that German shortcomings (over-emphasis upon offensive, poor logistics, faulty intelligence, etc.) were most apparent. This exculpatory history dovetailed with the West's Cold War struggle with the USSR in which the FRG became a vital component of NATO's defense and many of the Bundeswehr's officers were former enemies like Hans Speidel or Erich Hartmann. Wehrmacht figures such as Marseilles or Rommel became examples of capable men in service of a despicable regime. James Mason played Rommel as a typical worthy enemy and many of the war films of the 1950s and 60s would portray the German officers as fundamentally honorable, if technocratic, individuals. Although there were counter-narratives to this Cold War picture such as John Erickson's histories of the Eastern front or novels/films like The Guns of Navarone they were atypical. Hugh-Trevor Roper would lament in 1950 that "our friend Rommel" was becoming too ubiquitous the UK.

Finally, the hobby market has become a popularizer of the German military, especially from the Second World War. Wargames with German themes, plastic models, and miniatures with a German theme have been steady sellers since the 1960s. This form of media and consumption has become a major way in which people encounter the German military. Smelser and Davies have performed a survey of these early games and many of them overestimate the effectiveness of German units. While these historians overstate the importance of this facet of wargames, since this is also a function of balanced game design, they do have a point that the way these games are structured reenforce a perception of German military effectiveness. The fact that games have to be fun means that less than savory aspects of the German military experience are eliminated. A wargame in which replicates detaching troops to assist Einsatzgruppen would not be terribly enjoyable as well as being in very poor taste. Yet these games or other historically-based hobbies like plastic models emphasize accuracy and fidelity to history, but this is a very narrowly-defined version of accuracy.

Although I would hesitate to call it apologism, the public memory of the German military, especially in the anglophone regions, is highly selective and narrow.

Sources

Citino, Robert Michael. The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 2005.

Major, Patrick. "‘Our Friend Rommel’: The Wehrmacht as ‘Worthy Enemy’in Postwar British Popular Culture." German History 26, no. 4 (2008): 520-535.

McGinn, Matthew Edward. "Rommel, You Magnificent Bastard": The Desert Fox and the Rehabilitation of Germany in Postwar Media. Thesis (M.A.) -- San Diego State University, 2013, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/99587.

Niven, William John. Germans As Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany. Basingstoke [England]: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Smelser, Ronald M., and Edward J. Davies. The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.