Okay, I was really curious about this game online, so I did this:
Clicked multiplayer via gamespy. Waited 10 minutes. NOTHING CAME UP!!! What gives, because this is to me one of the best WW2 simulators on the market and has great online potential.

Hamachi does put your computer at risk, even with its option of blocking File Sharing and vulnerable Windows services. Aside from that, it's more complicated than this needs to be.
GameRanger supports Soldiers and automates the process, including port-forwarding/router support, without putting your computer on an open network with people you can't trust. (Even if you do trust them, you can't necessarily trust what malware they may be unknowingly running).
GameRanger is also very popular for Stronghold Crusader, which you mention having.

Well, GameRanger can't necessarily make a game more popular (although it did for Stronghold Crusader). Unfortunately, Soldiers is a fairly niche game, as well as being quite old now.
That said, I have seen people playing Soldiers on there every now and then. If you leave GameRanger running (even minimised to system tray), you'll get a notification when someone else wants to play it. If you're getting too many notifications from other games you have (eg. Stronghold Crusader), just change the game filter in the main window to include only Soldiers.

Is it really kosher for people to be hawking their payware here? [Yes I know there is a "free" version - it is still essentially advertising for the pro version]..
I got no beef with you Scott but I've never seen this here before.

my ip 192.168.1.145:3210

who want to play wet me