What is the DES algorithm And what are its variants?

The original DES algorithm, I believe, did only two things bit shifting and bit substituion. It di these operations repeadtley and on a very nonlinear fashion. I guess kinda like putting Scrabble letters in a bag and shaking them up. There are a couple variants I know of. Lucifer, which was developed by IBM in the 70s. And then there is Enigma.