The Commando starter army is one of the only ones I'd avoid like the plague. You're unlikely to ever need 60 plastic commandos as they're a ton of points.
A single box of infantry plus the support group set should be plenty to get started. You can build a PIAT team, sniper and light mortar from one plastic set along with 24 other guys. 3 squads of 8 (or 4 squads of 6) should be plenty. If you find you need a couple more dudes later you can always order a single extra sprue off eBay. The light mortar is not a necessity as often you'll want to run the medium mortar from the support group so skip that if you feel you need more regular dudes.
Then you can sprinkle in some transports like 15cwt trucks and jeeps as you see fit. I guess they could easily end up fighting alongside armoured units so adding a tank isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination.
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Late war Germans have the most possible options available to any faction. I'd stick with normal Germans as opposed to Fallschirmjager, unless he's dead set on them, as they're more flexible. The best starter set in terms of content is the Winter Germans one as it has the most useful vehicles (a Panzer IV and a truck) along with metal HQ minis, although then you're pretty stuck in a winter theme.
The German Grenadiers one is also pretty good with a Stug III (magnetise the gun barrel and you can also make a StuH 42) and a Puma, and also comes with a PAK40 anti tank gun which is ok, if not great. No HQ minis though so you're either making them out of plastics or buying an additional blister of men.
The Waffen SS starter swaps the Puma for a Tiger I, which is a huge points sink and borderline unusable in all but massive games. That said, He'll probably want all of these vehicles at some point so I'd go off which infantry men you prefer the look of.
You can always use the winter guys in greatcoats to represent units of SS if you like and all German infantry represented by plastic sets (except fallschirmjager) can be anywhere from inexperienced to veteran so they're incredibly flexible. The kits also mix really well so you can use bits from one to add variety to another if that's a thing he likes doing.
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Easy Army is pretty much a must for army building (I assume you've used it for WoE). I'd recommend starting with a normal Reinforced Platoon each.
