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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Both Slovakia and Croatia existed as distinct parts of Czechoslovakia (it's in the name) and Yugoslavia before Hitler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banovina_of_Croatia

They did not preserve their independence past WW2.

Yes - "distinct parts" i.e. administrative areas and not nations, which is what they currently are, and claim to be.

Their independence after 1991 was, disregarding foreign help for a moment, only possible because they had a bygone legacy as independent states that was possible to resurrect, and they only existed as independent states pre-1945 due to Hitler's decisions and the Third Reich.

administrative areas

They weren't just "administrative areas". Croats, for example, already existed as a separate ethnonational entity back then.

What was Croatia before 1941 if not an administrative part of the Yugoslavian state?

Ethnohistorical region with a strong separatist movement. Probability of Croats getting their independence as a result of Yugoslavian collapse (in itself a likely event) was quite high, Hitler had nothing to do with it.