Why did Stalin put a brutal totalitarian government into place in Eastern Germany and establish control of all its resources?

Answer 1

At the end of WW2 the Russian army captured Berlin before the allies got there. That meant that the western nations had to deal with Russia when it came to who would control Berlin and Germany. It was decided that Berlin would be divided into 4 sections. The western powers would get three sections while Russia got one. This became East Germany until 1989 when the Berlin Wall finally came down. The Russians controlled East Germany and the other soviet bloc countries as communists states with putting dictatorships to run the governments for Stalin. Stalin was a brutal dictator to all in Russia and the bloc states. He did this to retain control over the people he ruled and it didn't matter who or where they were. People were pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and never seen again. His interest in Germany and other bloc states was two fold because they contained Natural Resources and their location was important in relation to NATO members countries. It was often thought that if the soviets invaded Western Europe they would come from Poland into Germany through a pass that was on the German-Polish border. Even today this area is considered to be an important concern with western countries because it looks like Putin is trying to establish a new soviet bloc state in Europe. The oil resources and ability to have water access is important to Russia since it is essentially a land locked country which limits the ability for them to compete with western countries and this pushed Stalin to control what he could with an iron hand.