"How did most East Germans feel about being under Soviet rule? Did most eventually accept it and even came to believe that their system was better than West Germany's?"

 I picked this off "Quora", it was some tidbits I didn't know.  I did know about the removal of heavy industry to the USSR under Stalin's orders, this is part of the "reparations" and to punish the Germans for what they did to the "Rodina", that did cause heavy resentment, and the heavy Soviet response to the 1953 protest.  It did cause some pucker factors with the Berlin Brigade. especially after a few years earlier when Stalin tried to push the allies out of West Berlin.  The Soviets viewed the East Germans as their private playground back then, and the "Osties" had to endure a lot as an occupied people, far worse than the West did.   It did get a little better as time went on, but but the Soviets called East Germany the "Land of Milk and Chocolate".  For a conscript posting, it was one of the far better postings, better equipment, training, and the locals didn't complain.

East Germans never believed their Soviet-backed system was superior. After tanks crushed a 1953 uprising, they didn't accept the regime—they retreated into a secret double life to outlast it.

This survival mechanism is best understood through the concept of the Nischengesellschaft, or "niche society." In the years immediately following World War II, genuine acceptance was nearly impossible. The trauma of Soviet occupation—marked by mass rapes and the dismantling of East German industry for reparations—had already fostered deep resentment. The brutal suppression of the 1953 protests over production quotas simply cemented a lingering lesson: active resistance was futile, and Soviet rule was there to stay.

Once the Berlin Wall went up in 1961 and emigration became nearly impossible, East Germans had to adapt. People retreated from public political life into private "niches," such as weekend garden plots (Datsche) and tight-knit family circles, where they could speak freely without fear of the Stasi, the state security apparatus.

This is not to say there was zero genuine support. A minority of committed socialists believed in the state's official anti-fascist ideology. Others took pride in specific aspects of the German Democratic Republic, such as guaranteed employment, extensive child care, cheap housing, and the nation's outsized success in Olympic sports. These social safety nets provided a sense of security that some later missed after reunification.

However, the regime could never convince the public that its system was fundamentally better than the West, largely because of television. The majority of East Germans could receive West German broadcasts (Westfernsehen). Every evening, they watched Western news and entertainment, contrasting the colorful, consumer-rich society of the Federal Republic with their own gray, dilapidated cities and chronic shortages of basic goods like fresh fruit or modern cars.

When the Soviet Union's grip loosened under Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s, the illusion of acceptance evaporated. Hundreds of thousands of East Germans took to the streets in the autumn of 1989, not to reform the socialist state, but to dismantle it.

More than 100,000 people gather in Leipzig on October 23, 1989, during the Monday demonstrations that precipitated the fall of the East German government. Photo by Friedrich Gahlbeck is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de.