Richard Conrad Lukas (born August 29, 1937) is an American historian and author of books and articles on military, diplomatic, Polish, and Polish-American history.

[3][4] He was awarded an MA in 1960[2] and a PhD from Florida State University in 1963, for a thesis entitled "Air Force Aspects of American Aid to the Soviet Union: The Crucial Years 1941–1942".

[3][7] As a graduate student, Lukas was a contributor to the project that resulted in the publication of Air Force Combat Units of World War II (1961).

[8] Lukas's first book, Eagles East: The Army Air Forces and the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 (1970), a military-diplomatic study based on his doctoral dissertation, earned him the national history award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

[4] R. S. Hughes writing for the Military Affairs commended the book for its "extensive and detailed coverage of Allied-Soviet relations during World War II", and noted that it is particularly helpful for its discussion of the Lend-Lease program.

[15] The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944 (1986) is Lukas's most famous work and has been re-published in two subsequent editions (1997 and 2012, with a foreword by historian Norman Davies).

[27] Michael R. Marrus wrote in The Washington Post that "Lukas tells this story with an outrage properly contained within the framework of a scholarly narrative" but criticized what he felt was an unjustified "sustained polemic against Jewish historians".

[21] George Sanford noted in International Affairs that in tackling the subject of the suffering of ethnic Poles, Lukas's work is "strictly objective and academic in tone, presentation and content.

Schleunes writes that "Lukas makes it a point... to stress 'the commonality of suffering of Jewish and Polish children', an effort in which he largely succeeds.