Yes, they were false.
Someone who truly is superior doesn’t have to say they are, and doesn’t need people agreeing with them on it.
It’s a bitter pill for most to come to that realization.
They were, in fact, better than most of their contemporaries.
Not just anyone succeeds so well at a vastly complex job like that.
It pays to read history. Indeed, you can depend on George Patton on that, he was a voracious reader - and superior indeed, another such case. He could quote Polybius and Livy at need. Book suggestion- on Patton, get Ladislas Farago. Carlo D’Este is better sourced and more scholarly, but Farago was a better writer.