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This line of argument doesn't really make any sense. I could equally say it was my mother who made me possible and if she had not existed there would be no me. But my father had to exist in order to provide the impetus for me to be created. Just as The Hobbit had to exist to make LotR exist.
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What I was saying was that LotR breaks away from TH very early on in the drafting. TH becomes in many ways a source text. Tolkien did not write LotR as a sequel to TH - though that may have been his reason for
starting to write it. From that pov TH did 'have to exist' - just as Beowulf, the Eddas, the Mabinogion & the Kalevala 'had' to exist to make LotR exist. I don't think anyone would argue that all Tolkien's 'sources' should be included in the Legendarium.
As to what I said in the quote
Lalwende gives, I'm not sure how it applies. I was referring to an individual work of an author in that passage & how we experience it. This is a different argument - what belongs in the Legendarium & what does not. I don't consider that anything in TH 'breaks the spell' of the story. Its only when TH is taken as part of the Legendarium that it feels 'out of place'.