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Notes -
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.
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.
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