Why...? Did you look at a geopolitical map of Europe during that period? If you did you'd act less surprised that the commander of the NATO forces of central Europe happens to often be a high ranking officer from central Europe. Germany specifically, the very country cut in half between west and east alignment and the epicenter of a lot of cold war shit, and not from Italy or Belgium or Denmark which are not located in Central Europe. Give the tankie conspiracies a rest.

Your sentiment here betrays a misunderstanding of the way war works. People who fight in wars for years or decades (which was very common at the point in history you're referencing) were often "just" in the business of fighting in wars. There were people who fought on two different sides of the same "ideological" conflict. The mechanics of fighting a war are fairly separate from the political and ideological ends of the war.

Nobody tell this guy about Operation Paperclip

The most simple answer: We wanted as many Germans to eventually use against the Soviets. Anyone who was not a big name was kept around for the eventual return of the West German Military. Same with scientists and operation paperclip. The soviets did the same to eventually be used against the rest of Europe.