"... Various nations will be annihilated"

Lately I have been thinking about this aspect of the message claimed (quite credibly) to have been delivered to peasant children (who did not understand the message at all, and in fact thought "Russia" was the name of a woman) near the Portuguese town of Fatima over a century ago:

To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

Much could be said about this, but it is best to keep it short. 

Firstly, "the errors of Russia" are like "Lou Gehrig's Disease".  Gehrig was not the first person to contract amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and if you come down with the disease, it isn't his fault.  It's much the same with the errors of Russia, which were not Orthodoxy, but Communism.  More specifically, it was how Communism

• denied that God exists at all, or at the very least, reduced God to a mere figure of speech,
• made a god of politics, and 
• made economics the center of everything.

Just like you do not need to be Lou Gehrig to have ALS,  you can be a fervent Capitalist and share the errors of Russia.  In fact, most fervent Capitalists do.

The interesting question, though, is, "What does it mean for a nation to be annihilated?"  The answer, I suspect, is found in Matthew 5:13:

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

A nation that definitively rejects its vocation is, perhaps, good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.  It is hardly an exaggeration to say it has been annihilated.  Like a neutron bomb, this kind of annihilation leaves most of the structures standing, but dead. 

And yet, God "quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were."  He can restore to life a valley of dry bones, although they must first become dry bones.