Well, he wasn't so much a Nazi official as a good military commander. In that, you can add folks like Balck, Von Rundstedt, Guderian, Skorzeny, Doenitz, maybe Von Arnim, and probably a whole slew of Generals we in the West rarely heard of because they were fighting the Soviets. One doesn't have to -like- someone (or their politics) to respect their military capability.

In the public perception, Rommel got a lot of press in the West, though, because he was basically the only significant German commander that the Western Allies were fighting for some two years.