Richard James Overy FRHistS FBA (born 23 December 1947) is a British historian who has published on the history of World War II and Nazi Germany.

[2] Overy's work on the Second World War has been praised as "highly effective [in] the ruthless dispelling of myths" (A. J. P. Taylor), "original and important" (The New York Review of Books) and "at the cutting edge" (The Times Literary Supplement).

[3] In the late 1980s, Overy was involved in a historical dispute with Timothy Mason that mostly played out on the pages of Past & Present over the reasons for the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

Overy argued against Mason's thesis by maintaining that though Germany was faced with economic problems in 1939, their extent cannot explain aggression against Poland and the outbreak of war was caused by the Nazi leadership.

[5] Overy asserted that the repressive capacity of the German state as a way of dealing with domestic unhappiness was somewhat downplayed by Mason.