Not according to some sources; Churchill claimed he was surprised by Roosevelt's announcement but went along with it. The men doing the fighting were probably equally surprised.
Well, Churchill is up there with folks like Guderian in terms of "mythologizing" (being a lying liar who lies) the war. And indeed, some of his lies had good reasons behind them. Both the US and the UK benefited from the myth that they were the best and most trusting of allies both during and after the war. And in fairness, it was an amazingly close alliance. Just people were human.
So when and where did Churchill claim this surprise? And who were his audience when he made the claim?
The 14 points were unacceptable to a German nation that still (felt that it) had a chance to win the war. One of Wilson's points called the Franco-German War (declared by France) and the annexation of Elsass-Lothringen (annexed by the French kings in the previous centuries) an "injustice", in a time when violent annexations were perfectly legal under international law. Now, I assume that Wilson just wanted to placate the French and maybe just didn't know that much about the German-French borderlands (in English it's mostly called Alsace-Lorraine, so it might just be that people thought that it's unambiguously French), but that condition alone made accepting Wilson 14 points very hard for patriotic Germans.
Right. You see why I used it as an example then. Applying linguistic nationalism to the natural mixing at borderlands is a big invitation to violence, and Wilson was really keen on it.
While the borders in Europe are a mess, and Elsass-Lothringen was a complicated case, there were just territories that were clearly ethnically German (like Eupen-Malmédy, where Belgium conducted one of the most hilariously infuriating "plebiscites") or had a German majority (like Danzig and West Prussia) which were annexed my neighboring countries for clearly strategic reasons without any consideration for the principle of national self-determination.
I think most border areas are complicated cases... Though Eupen-Malmedy was an exception.
As for Danzig and West Prussia, there was no way that a Poland of any kind could sit next to post WW1 Germany and have national self-determination without secure access to the sea. Keep in mind that even in the US in this period, Polonophobia was strong. Imagine how much worse it was in a country where Poland's existence served as a reminder of defeat.
After the Entente conducted a very successful propaganda war to drag America into the war, and after America led the same propaganda war against the authoritarian war criminals ruling in Germany, many Germans (Social-Democrats, Liberals, Catholics) sincerely thought that the peace order proposed by their enemies would actually respect the right to any nation to rule itself and achieve peace and prosperity. It was only when the newly formed democratic government saw the conditions for armistice that it began to realize what the Entente really had in mind.
I'd recommend reading some actual histories that deal with the negotiation process of the treaties that ended WW1. One of the problems faced by the negotiators is how to build a European order where any nation had the right to rule itself and achieve peace and prosperity. German sovereignty, peace and prosperity had to be compromised with French, Lithuanian, Danish, Czech, Belgian and Polish sovereignty, peace and prosperity. And French SP&P had to compromise with German and British SP&P. And Polish SP&P had to be compromised with German, Czech, Slovak, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Russian SP&P.
And this was a time when the whole set of rules had changed and the new set of rules were in the process of being written.
Sure, the Germans weren't allowed to take any official role beyond signing the finished product, but the aim of the Entente after WW1 was to settle things with a prosperous Germany in a prosperous Europe. Compare Versailles with any of the treaties the German allies got. Or with Brest-Litovsk or the 1918 treaty of Bucharest that Germany imposed on Russia and Romania respectively. Or with the treaties that ended any of the major 19th Century wars in Europe.
Contrary to popular myth, the Entente did make a good-faith effort to deliver a new Europe based on the ideas in the 14 points. Just, when you really think about those ideas, and think that German fantasies would have to co-exist with the fantasies of other people it is clear why no-one would or could get what they imagined.
Which really also plays into the entire theme of deception and unfair treatment that motivated Germany to revise the Versailles treaty in the interwar years and discredited the Weimar Republic which had had to accept the Versailles treaty.
I would venture that what really discredited the Weimar republic was the efforts of the army to shift the blame for losing the war by any means necessary.
Between that, the Great Depression and the former Entente members trying to wriggle out of their responsibilities under the treaty by any means, the peace was lost. Not because it was an "unfair" treaty. But because the interwar years saw actors on all sides undermining the peace in an effort to bolster their own narrow self-interest.
Similarly, one can say that the peace that ended WW2 didn't succeed because it was far harsher. Rather, it succeeded because of the hard work on all sides to build on the foundation provided by the return to peace. I have no doubt that if the US and UK had behaved after WW2 as they had after WW1 the chances for peace continuing would be much lower.
Bringing this back to national trauma, what really stands out to me is that conditions being conducive to healing after the trauma has occurred is really important.
fasquardon