Rommel knew that he was beaten by the Allies superior logistics rather than any sensational generalship on the part of Montgomery. However, Montgomery played his hand effectively and resisted all the pressure on him from Churchill to commence offensives before he had built up overwhelming superiority.
Montgomery and Rommel
Rommel regarded Montgomery, and by extension, most Allied generalship as cautious and timid, but this is only a partial picture. Great Britain and the USA were democracies and could not (and didn’t want to) drive their men in the same way that Germany, Russia and Japan could and did - the public at home wouldn’t have stood for it.
There are two other factors that enter this equation. Firstly the British army was a diminishing force and units were being disbanded towards the end of the war to make up for casualties. Montgomery was not in a position to squander his men, especially his infantry. As a result, he was very careful in trying not to take unnecessary casualties as can be seen by his willingness to take significant armour casualties instead. These, despite the number of tanks lost, generated relatively few dead soldiers. This leads into the second point, which is that, by this time in the war, the Allies had time and logistics on their side. They could afford to replace tanks and indulge in huge artillery barrages in lieu of taking casualties. Rommel on the other hand often had poor logistics and was forced by circumstance to move fast and be daring - he had no alternative.
Trying to compare the two men is a hiding to nothing - they were operating under completely different imperatives. Rommel may have thought that Montgomery was too cautious, but the truth is that Montgomery could afford to be so. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks.
Interestingly, at roughly the same time that Rommel was writing his book Infanterie greift an (Infantry attacks), Montomery was involved in writing the new British Infantry Training Manual.
Source: Quora
