Given that Churchill was British Prime Minister between 1951-55: the key years in which the decision to "go for diesel" with the modernisation plan were made, it wouldn't surprise me if there is an element of truth in there being worries about communist incursions into the coal supply.
Remember two things: firstly Churchill was responsible (as First Lord of the Admiralty) for instigating the replacement of coal by oil in the Royal Navy. Secondly, his role in breaking the National Strike in the 1920's (which to him would have been communist-led). The two together would have shown that switching to an oil-based fuel (whether diesel or heavy oil) was both possible and desirable on cost and security grounds.
While he was, for sure, desperately needed at the time when he
was that overall the more I hear nowadays about Mr. W.S.C., the less I like him, for various reasons !
... Holland proceeded as quickly as possible with electrification and I think that most of their diesel locos were shunters.
The Netherlands' railways were very hard-hit by World War II: in 1944, in support of Allied military action, their staff went on strike; whereupon the system was in a large part torn up and the materials sent to Germany. To a very considerable extent, it was a case of the system having to be rebuilt from scratch after the war; with all principal lines being made electric (I believe a fair amount of electrification had been implemented before the war). If I have things rightly, the last use of steam on the Dutch state railways was in 1958 -- it having been employed mainly for shunting, in its last years.
But as you say, conditions after the war were shocking across much of Europe, but especially Germany/Austria. If you get a chance to see a documentary made by Frenchman Olivier Wieviorka this year - I think it's called something like "After Hitler" - this depicts the problems faced by the Allies from May 1945.
This documentary would seem to have something of a parallel in a book by Keith Lowe, published a few years ago:
Savage Continent -- Europe in the Aftermath of World War II. From what I gather, chronicling (as referenced above) often extremely bad times in the late 1940s in all countries of Continental Europe which had been German-occupied or on the Axis side. Much privation, disorder, crime, and often violence -- this in Western Europe, even to quite some extent in the small liberal democracies; whereas in Eastern Europe under Stalinism to the max, outright hell was unleashed. (I flipped through the book when it came out, and chose not to read it: already had a fair idea of how things were in those years, and preferred not to be made miserable in detail.)
Purely railway-wise, things must have been wonderful in Eastern Europe in the decade after 1945: but one feels that the other stuff there and then, would have been too high a price to pay !
Dates which I have for steam finishing in France and the two Germanies, from back numbers of
Continental Railway Journal in my possession, follow...
Yes, 1974 according to:
http://www.sncf.com/en/meet-sncf/sncf-history?date=1959
And, indeed, it was at Sarreguemines (I hadn't realised that before - it may even have been the same loco we saw working 11-12 months earlier.)
"And on 31 March of the same year, the 141 R 73 steam locomotive, based at the Sarreguemines depot, made its last commercial run, ending Frances steam traction era after 142 years."
The end for SNCF steam "pure and simple", spring 1974 as above; but a tiny amount of steam continued in commercial public rail service in France for another year-and-a-half, thanks to a particularly French bit of weirdness. At the time of French railway nationalisation in 1938, certain standard-gauge secondary / branch-line parts of the "big companies' " systems were hived-off to other railway operators; motive power for the lines concerned was leased henceforth, from the SNCF. One such outfit was the Franche-Comte system of the CFTA undertaking, based on Gray not quite 300km south-east of Paris; which leased from the SNCF some class 140C 2-8-0s (class extinct on SNCF itself, I think as of the late 1960s). A few of these continued in regular use on freight over part of this system, until September 1975.
I suspect the DDR kept steam going well into the 1980's following the cessation of "cheap" Russian oil in the mid 1970's (they could sell it elsewhere for hard cash following the 1973 crisis) - Honneker's policy was to make up the energy gap by burning even more coal...
Standard-gauge steam in East Germany was gradually run down until its end in early autumn 1988 (last venue for its regular use, was Oschersleben). Steam continued, of course, to work most services on seven or eight narrow-gauge systems / lines (basically still running today with steam) -- the E.G. authorities' plans being to keep these with steam as an attraction for tourists / railfans, while also retaining them as railways doing a serious job of carrying passengers / freight.
Now what you wrote about France would have been true for DB in the early 70s. Rheine-Emden was steam until - i'm not sure, my last trip there was 72 autumn, and i'd guess it was 75% steam. Pacifics on expresses (well, more like semi-fasts0. The Mosel Valley still had significant steam on passenger into 72, and I think Regensburg-Hof was 03 pacifics still too.
And you had 086 ? tanks on lines like the Aschaffenburg branch.
Plus there was still a lot of steam on goods traffic. Don't think there was much left after 75 though.
DB steam finished for good in October 1977 -- its last use being on the Rheine -- Emden line.
