nazis

They started World War 2. They perpetrated the Holocaust. They were led by Adolf Hitler. But beyond these history-defining headlines, who were the Nazis?

Though they’re justifiably infamous as the most widely reviled villains of modern history, there’s still a lot that even most history buffs don’t know about the Third Reich. From the party’s formation in the wake of World War 1 through their early bursts of large-scale violence like Kristallnacht to the height of World War 2, the Nazis’ history is filled with figures and stories that will leave you shocked.

Whether it’s the vile experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele upon concentration camp prisoners or the drugs like Pervitin that they gave their own soldiers in order to keep them fighting, these stories of the Third Reich prove that Nazi history is even more outrageous than you realized.

From the lesser-known tales of important figures like Hermann Goring to the bizarre corners of Nazi lore that rarely make the history books, here’s everything any student of history need know about the 20th century’s greatest antagonists.