Why was Rommel assigned to N Afrika?

I don't think that the problem was the result of subordinating intelligence officers to operations officers.

During the Reichswehr years, the German Army was woefully short of General Staff (and other) officers. There was absolutely no way 'to establish a first class intelligence service' under the Versailles Treaty.

When Hitler overturned the Versailles Treaty, he had a unique opportunity to emphasize military intelligence. If he gets credit (as he does with David Thornley) for backing the Panzer initiatives of Guderian, then he should take the blame for not backing 'a first class intelligence service' in the 1930s. If he had cared about intelligence, he should have seen to it that intelligence was a priority in his High Command.

Even after Hitler overturned the Versailles Treaty, there was a shortage of trained officers (especially General Staff officers) in the German Army. What should the German Army have done? Left Ia (Operations) posts empty to fill Ic (Intelligence) posts? If Hitler hadn't been in such a hurry to start a war and hadn't expanded the German Army faster than was recommended by Fritsch (the Army's C-in-C at the time), Beck (the Chief of the Army General Staff at the time), and Schwedler (Chief of the Army Personnel Office at the time), then perhaps the German Army could have been better prepared for war in terms of its intelligence service.

Hitler's rush to start a war created a situation in which the German Armed Forces 1.) had a woefully weak intelligence service, 2.) had a mish-mash of weapons that weren't completely ready yet for war (since Hitler had told each of the armed services to plan for a war in 1941 or 1943 at the earliest), and 3.) had no unified command structure to handle the directing of the war.

That's not good strategic planning.

The early victories of the Germans were much more the result of superior military doctrine on the part of the Army (owed in large part to Beck's Truppenfuehrung) and superior tactical skill (owed in large part to General Staff training overseen by Beck and Halder) than to anything that Hitler

(snip excellent stuff)

To add to your argument, Hitler deliberately subverted the Wehrmacht command structure by using the planning staff of OKW as an operational Army command for the Danish and Norwegian campaigns, cutting out OKH, and depriving OKH of information which it needed to plan for the attack on France and the Low Countries.

I completely agree.

While entirely agreeing, it is also worth noting that the deficiencies of their opponents, the British, French and Belgians, were a large factor in the German success. After all, the Heer conquered Belgium and France with what by later war standards was no more than a force of armoured cars.