And killed them.

I met two former WW2 german fighter pilots in the 1970s. Both were impressive and neither were aces. The first had been in a University in 1943 when he was drafted and selected for pilot training. He never told me how many victories he had if any but he was a brilliant individual and responsible for some of the engineering of one or more of the HP calculators of that era. The second was a University professor and author. He had been shot down in North Africa and was a POW in America. He earned a Ph.D. in Germany after the war and then a second one in America (NYU I think). Both were impressive individuals. If those two were typical representatives of German fighter pilots of WW2 the Luftwaffe certainly selected high IQ men.