I've been looking for my old copy of Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz because among several indelible scenes envisaged is a passage of what I'd call neo-biblical language which brings the ideas of holocaust and apocalypse together in a grim recapitulation of Genesis. God is questioning the great Prince NAME who triggers the catastrophic nuclear war and tells him: "You have made a holocaust of my children!"

Walter Miller and Canticle have come up in Mudcat before. I'm going by memory here and my words might not be accurate but the concepts I gathered from the book are always with me and I can't get it out of my head at the moment.

During WW2 the Allies had landed on the Italian mainland and were advancing against German positions including a thousand year old monastery at Monte Cassino. The Allies were afraid the Germans would use it for snipers and artillery sighting and got dispensation from the Pope to bomb it. The Germans were not originally intending to use it, but after it was bombed to smithereens it was more suitable for just use. The situation is rife with major ironies. Walter Miller was an airman in the bombing run, and as a religious Catholic and a feeling human being was deeply affected. It led to the thoughts which he published first as a short story and then as a novel.