Interesting question, and while I normally focus on the western front(s), I will try to answer it best I can.

So, first of all:

Or are the generals just blaming Hitler for their mistakes?

I'll answer your last question first: yes. Hitler and the German generals had two different ideas of warfare. Hitler was ideologically driven to secure the survival of the German people, which to him meant securing resources and agriculturally useful territories - for example Ukraine (for agriculture) and the caucasus (for raw materials).

The generals on the other hand were largely (not all of them, as I am generalizing hundreds, if not thousands, of leading German commanders here) of the opinion that winning a war meant defeating armies and occupying central cities and infrastructure. They generally favored attacking the industrial base of western Russia - Moscow and Leningrad. That, according to Piekalkiewicz, is part of the reason that the German strategy (1941: attack to the north, 1942: attack to the south, 1943: attack the center), kept switching to the point where one might question whether the leadership itself was unsure of what their prime objective was.

You will find many generals blaming the political leadership after their collective defeat. That is tradition whenever Germany loses a world war.

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Alright, with the differences between Hitler and the generals out of the way (and I won't allow myself judgement over which kind of warfare was better as an idea), let's see to the rest of your question.

Hitler's main struggle as a military commander was - next to his gradual drift into insanity - that he was unwilling to accept defeat. Going back to Sun Tzu, tactical retreat is considered one of the most important aspects of warfare to turn an initially negative situation into a positive. Hitler, with his ideology of freeing the world from bolshevism in the name of the Germanic races and the fascistic movement, was unable to accept that already liberated territory would fall back to bolshevist influences once again.

However, this was, in my opinion as well as in the opinion of historians like Piekalkiewicz and Christian Zentner, a tactical error on Hitler's part. Look at this map of eastern Europe. You see how the land keeps growing wider and wider the further east you go, even before you hit the caucasus, not to speak of the urals? Yeah. That is thousands of kilometers of frontline you have to defend. The German generals argued - in my opinion at least partially correctly (I don't agree with the possibility of a German victory, but it was certainly the better option for Germany) - that by conserving manpower and drawing in reinforcements and taking up a new backup line to then press the offensive once more the more mobile but numerically inferior German forces might be able to turn the tables once again, just like the Soviets had turned the tables on them in late 1941. The German forces were drifting apart further and further as the campaign dragged on and the supply lines kept growing. Equipment was affected by losses the German industry - getting increasingly targeted by American and British bombing campaigns - could not replace without significant efforts that were made impossible by the bad infrastructure and the massive area of combat.

Now, to go back to your headline. How effective were these, as you call them, "tank maneuvering tactics". Very effective. Very effective in areas that were geographically constrained (say, between the North Sea and the border to Switzerland) and excellently built up with infrastructure like roads and railway lines. Even if your enemy destroys them, repairing them is easier than having none of them at all.

The Soviet Union has understood the lesson of Russian military history: Russia has two resources - land and manpower. By trading them patiently with the enemy and drawing their supply lines thin, the Russians have made up for their military disadvantages again and again. German military strategy was not adapted enough to account for these two factors of Russia's vast strength and size, and thus even the most defensive reinforcement plans of the German generalship would have been doomed to eventually fail - there were not enough tanks to support armored spearhead operations on the scale that the Eastern Front necessitated. The moment that the Soviet counter attack at Moscow drove back the Germans into the Russian plains without shelter with winter advancing was the moment that the German Reich lost the war in the east. (This is a perhaps position on my part, as several historians argue that Stalingrad was the point of no return, but that is not as clear cut and very much up to debate in my opinion.)

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Sources:

• Arnold-Forster, Mark: "Die Welt im Krieg", 1973

• Piekalkiewicz, Janusz: "Der Zweite Weltkrieg", 1985

• Wucher, Albert: "Marksteine der deutschen Zeitgeschichte 1914-1945", 1991

• Zentner, Christian: "Der Zweite Weltkrieg", 1998